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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MISSIONARY SERMONS 



ADDRESSES. 



BY ELTSMITH, 

Missionary to Syria. 



r 

NEW-YORK 



SAXTON & MILES, 

PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS, 

205 BROADWAY. 

1842. 



CONTENTS, 



SERMON I. 

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF WESTERN 

ASIA, 13 

SERMON II. 

DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO LIVE FOR THE CONVER- 
SION OF THE WORLD, . 85 

SERMON III. 

FAREWELL REQUEST IN BEHALF OF THE SYRIAN 

MISSION, 131 

ADDRESS I. 

TRIALS OF MISSIONARIES, 185 

ADDRESS II. 

PRESENT ATTITUDE OF MOHAMMEDANISM, IN REF- 
ERENCE TO THE SPREAD OF THE GOSPEL, . . 206 



PREFACE. 



The author of the following sermons 
and addresses is favorably known to the 
public by his " Researches in Armenia," pub- 
lished in the early part of the present year. 
This little volume will be found to possess 
the same general excellence with that more 
extended work. The sermons were listened 
to with great interest, by numerous audiences 
in different parts of the country ; and the 
wish was often expressed, that they might 
be committed to the press, when no longer 
needed for the pulpit. This fact having 
been communicated to Mr. Smith, before 



VI PREFACE. 



his return to Syria, the manuscripts were left 
for publication in the rTands of the editor. 
Two addresses by the same author, are also 
included in the volume. Though they have 
already been printed, the first in a separate 
pamphlet, the second in the American Quar- 
terly Observer, their republication will be 
regretted by no one. 

Indeed, who that reflects on the long con- 
tinued failure of the church to spread a 
knowledge of the gospel through the world, 
will not desire the widest possible circulation 
to be given to authentic, compendious, judi- 
cious statements respecting the condition of 
the unevangelized nations ? especially when 
he considers, that the grand reason of this 
delinquency of the church is not probably so 
much the want of piety, as the want of 
knowledge. There is piety enough to insure 
a rapid and great extension of the missionary 
work, if the church were better informed on the 
subject. The present aspect of our churches 



PREFACE Vll 

in regard to missions, countenances this con- 
clusion. There are now few revivals of reli- 
gion in our land, and for a year or two past 
piety has been supposed to be on the decline ; 
and yet, because knowledge respecting the 
nature and claims of the missionary enter- 
prize has increased more than piety has 
declined, the disposition to patronize mis- 
sions among the heathen was never so strong 
as it is now. When we read of the sterling 
piety of good men in past ages, we are con- 
founded by the thought that they felt and 
did so little for the heathen. This we must 
not excuse. But is it not accounted for by 
their circumstances, which were less favor- 
able for gaining access to the heathen world, 
and by the absence of that kind of knowl- 
edge, by means of which the sympathies and 
energies of the church are now so exten- 
sively enlisted in foreign missions ? Had 
good men of past ages been placed in our 
circumstances, and known all that we know, 



Vlll PREFACE. 

they would have felt as deeply and done as 
much for heathen nations. The change is 
to be referred to the providence of God. 
Commerce has thrown the world open to 
inspection ; there is far more printing and 
reading ; man is more a citizen of the 
world ; and a thousand causes are in opera- 
tion to annihilate the distance and estrange- 
ment of nations from each other. These 
causes, more than revivals of religion, per- 
haps, have given the thoughts of good men a 
new direction. Their views have been ex- 
tended ; the world has been made to appear 
like one great neighborhood ; and, as a con- 
sequence of this, through the agency of the 
Holy Spirit, the opinion is gaining ground in 
the church, that a man may be as much in 
the way of his duty, in supporting a preacher 
of the gospel on the banks of the Tigris, or 
the Ganges, as in his own village. 

The view which was taken of the heathen 
world, when the church began to look that 



PREFACE. IX 

way, was well fitted to awaken attention. 
The church was pointed to six hundred mil- 
lions of human beings perishing for want of 
her assistance. But the idea of such a vast 
number of beings, all in a mass, or scattered 
over the wide world, awakened as much a 
feeling of despair, as of pity. The impression 
was like that produced by a first sight of the 
boundless ocean. Who would launch away 
upon waters without a shore ? While this 
was the only view which the church was able 
to take, it did little more than gaze upon the 
spectacle. Since then the mighty expanse 
has been found to be bounded by shores, and 
broken by continents and islands ; these sev- 
erally are made the objects of investigation *; 
the impressions are distinct, vivid, and 
practical ; and now, with this increase of 
knowledge, there is growing up a spirit of 
missionary enterprize, the effect of benevo- 
lence, which is pervading the church of 
Christ ; as the spirit of commercial activity, 



X PREFACE. 

the result of a desire for gain, is taking 
possession of the mercantile world. The 
love of money was as strong in former times, 
as it is now ; but the extent of its desires 
and plans was limited by many of the very 
same causes, which confined the benevolence 
of the church of Christ. 

What therefore we are to aim at, in 
addition to the increase of vital piety, is to 
spread out before the church the actual 
condition of every part of the unevangelized 
world. This work is far from being yet 
accomplished. A considerable part of the 
earth is still but little known even to com- 
merce and science. Nor do the researches 
of mere men of the world, however intelli- 
gent, furnish the information needed by the 
church for its missionary operations. The 
researches must be made by men having a 
constant reference to that enterprize ; and 
more than three-fourths of the unevangelized 
world remain to be thus explored. 



PREFACE. XI 

Messrs. Smith and Dwight have performed 
this work very satisfactorily along the ex- 
tensive route of their travels through the 
upper regions of Western Asia ; and the 
reader will find much light thrown by the 
sermons and addresses in this volume upon 
the intellectual, moral, and religious condi- 
tion of the nominal Christians and Moham- 
medans around the eastern shores of the 
Mediterranean. 

An intimate personal acquaintance with 
Mr. Smith has given to the editor the 
highest confidence in the fidelity, judgment, 
and accuracy of his statements. They may 
safely be taken as the basis of plans and 
efforts by missionary societies ; and they will 
be read with interest by all who are desirous 
of obtaining just views of mankind. 

Boston, Nov. 1, 1833. 



SERMON I. 



Moral and religious condition of 
western asia. 



Matthew v. 13.* 

Ye are the salt of the earth ; but if the salt have lost his savor, 
wherewith shall it be salted ? it is thenceforth good for noth- 
ing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. 

This passage describes the salutary influence 
of true Christianity ; and its worthlessness when 
corrupted. I have chosen it to guide me, in 
giving you a statement of the religious and 
moral condition of western Asia, where I have 



* The reader will be occasionally reminded in perusing this dis- 
course, of some passages in the author's " Researches in Armenia." 
The resemblance is greatest near the end, and is owing to the fact, 
that the sermon was written before the printing of the Researches, 
and it was found convenient to select passages from it to form the 
conclusion of that work. It is hoped the reader will not find thi» 
repetition of ideas, and occasionally of expressions, irksome. 



14 

journeyed and labored, the last six years, as a 
missionary. 

You may have a more distinct conception of 
the extensive regions to which my observations 
will refer, by being told, in a word, where Provi- 
dence has led me to make them. My proper 
station has been Malta ; but I have been absent 
from it thrice, on long journeys : once, to Egypt, 
and thence, through the desert, to Palestine, 
and Syria ; again, to Greece and its islands ; and 
third, to Armenia, which led me to Smyrna and 
Constantinople, through the whole length of 
Asia Minor, and into Georgia and Persia, to a 
distance of more than a thousand miles by land, 
eastward of Constantinople. 

This whole region, covering thousands of 
miles in extent, is inhabited, with only trifling 
exceptions, by Mohammedans, nominal Chris- 
tians, an-d Jews. Time will allow me to speak 
of only the two former; Mohammedans, and 
nominal Christians. I have gone among them, 
speaking their languages, having constant per- 
sonal intercourse with them, and reading, to a 
considerable extent, their books ; and have there- 
fore had a fair opportunity to understand their 
sentiments, character, and condition. 

The most convenient arrangement of w 7 hat 
I have to say, is suggested by the several clauses 



15 

of my text. A single reflection upon the happy 
influence of true religion, will lead me, by way 
of contrast, to show — the deleterious influence of 
Mohammedanism. Passing next to the corrupt 
Christianity of Western Asia, I shall show — 
That it has lost the essential principles of the gos- 
pel — that its beneficial influence has ceased — that 
it is despised and oppressed. And then I shall 
conclude by asking — How can these systems of 
error be undermined, and pure religion revived? 

"Ye are the salt of the earth.' 3 The dis- 
tinguishing property of salt, is to preserve animal 
substances from putrefaction. In reference to 
this property, it is here made an emblem of 
Christianity. Human nature ever tends to moral 
corruption. The principles of true religion exert 
a conservative influence to keep it from total 
destruction. 

They exert this influence upon believers. By 
them was just Lot preserved from being com- 
pletely corrupted by the pollution of Sodom, 
where his righteous soul was vexed from day 
to day by the filthy conversation of the wicked. 
Now, they not only keep believers from being 
thoroughly contaminated by the evil that is in 
the world ; but they positively purify the heart 
How many, following on greedily after every 
species of wickedness, have they, under your 



16 

own observation, transformed into dutiful and 
affectionate relatives, worthy and useful citizens 
of the country, and " fellow citizens with the 
saints and of the household of God ? " 

Through the influence of believers, also, they 
keep the impenitent from that depth of moral 
wretchedness into which they would otherwise 
sink. In the neighborhood of piety, a near 
and tangible approach of truth may, indeed, 
provoke now and then a hardened wretch to an 
outbreaking of impious wickedness and blas- 
phemy, similar to that to which the spirits in 
despair are urged by their distinct knowledge 
of divine things. But generally, iniquity hides 
its head, and the unconverted are brought, by 
enlightened conscience, under a restraint that 
makes them respect religion and its ordinances, 
observe the laws of morality, and obey the laws 
of the country. 

Would you estimate the salutary influence of 
true religion ? Survey minutely all the bles- 
sings and privileges of our happy land. Enu- 
merate the sanctuaries, where the laws of God 
are promulgated from Sabbath to Sabbath, to 
exert their restraints upon the jarring passions 
of sinful men. See the clear light of science 
and of truth, shining into almost every mind 
from our schools and seminaries of learning. 



17 

Look abroad even upon the fields, smiling under 
an industry that would make sterility itself fer- 
tile, and reflecting the genial influence of laws 
that effectually banish the rapacity of despotic 
rulers, and the violence of lawless robbers, and 
make men feel that their property is their own. 
These, and all the blessings we so highly prize, 
-are the legitimate effects of true Christianity. 

Examine the history of all ages, and the 
present condition of every nation, and you will 
find no other religion exerting this salutary 
influence. Contrast with it the influence of 
Mohammedanism, which approaches the nearest 
of all false religions, to the religion of the Bible. 

Upon the personal character of its professors, 
the influence of Mohammedanism is far from 
salutary. I am not about to deny to the Turks 
the character and attributes of men. Their 
redeeming quality of good faith in trade, which 
gives them, in the estimation of the merchant, 
so decided a superiority over their native Chris* 
tian neighbors, I would not detract from them. 
I freely confess that nature has made them for 
a noble race, by endowing them with the germs 
of a character, which, if fostered by a proper 
moral influence, might rank them among the 
foremost nations of the earth. But, withered 
and blasted by their false religion, their char- 
2* 



18 

acter now possesses faults, numerous and great ; 
which no candid observer can overlook, or fail 
to trace to their proper source. 

The arrogance and cruelty of Mohammedans, 
whether Turks or Arabs, toward other sects, is 
proverbial. Nor has report defamed them. 
Europeans do not now often experience the 
enormities of the Saracen and Seljookian con^ 
quests, when the Arabian and Turkish powers 
first arose. They are generally suffered to pass 
without injury or serious insult. But the idea 
that this tolerance arises from real esteem, is 
totally unfounded, and could hardly have been 
honestly advanced, had travellers understood the 
languages of the country, so as to search into 
the real motives of their treatment. All my ob- 
servation has uniformly combined to produce the 
fullest conviction, that, aside from the influence 
of a traveller's money to procure him individual 
attentions, fear of European power and ven- 
geance alone, acquires for Europeans the respect 
of Moslems. Hence, whatever war, or battle., 
or smaller chastisement makes them feel the 
strength of Europe and their own weakness, 
never fails sensibly to increase their civility. 
And when sudden provocation blinds them to 
consequences, their hatred and contempt for 



19 

Christians, bursts forth in treatment the most 
barbarous and unfeeling. 

Else, why have vessels of war been so often 
drawn up before the city of Smyrna, and the 
other marts of Turkey, to shield by the terror of 
their broad-sides, the citizens of Europe from 
the eifects of Turkish provocation ? Why have 
Europeans been so often frightened away to 
their ships, or to mountains, for a refuge from 
Turkish wrath ? Subsequent to the battle of 
Navarino, I was myself one of the great number 
throughout Turkey, that experienced this alarm ; 
and was among the last of the Europeans of 
Beyroot, merchants and consuls, that fled to 
Mount Lebanon for safety. That dark and 
stormy night was the time for the apologist of 
the Turks to review his opinions of Turkish 
tolerance ! We shunned the momentary burst 
of reckless resentment, and as soon as the Mosr 
lems had time to reflect upon the severity of the 
chastisement, and draw from it the lesson of 
civility which it taught, we had no more to 
fear. 

The native Christians are most exposed to the 
effects of this unfeeling disposition. Their only 
protection,— the only consideration for which the 
Koran allows the toleration of their existence, — is 
their money ; which, either by legal or arbitrary 



20 

exactions, is made to flow into the treasury of 
the government, or into the pockets of its of- 
ficers, about as fast as they can earn it. In 
fact, they are called, in the language of the 
country, ray ah, which means a flock ; it is pas- 
tured for the sake of its fleece. When passion 
blinds Mohammedans to the interests of their 
purse, they will bastinado a Christian till the 
flesh drops from his feet, impale him, or cut off 
his head, without a sign of remorse. 

The destruction of Scio and Psarra, and the 
other horrid scenes of the Greek revolution, that 
chilled the blood of Christendom, were but fair 
exhibitions of their disposition upon a large 
scale. From one or another of its effects, are 
the native Christians never entirely secure ; and 
sometimes does sad experience of it awaken their 
fears till ' the sound of a shaken leaf will chase 
them.'- — While residing in Mount Lebanon, I 
spent a Sabbath with my brethren in the suburbs 
of Beyroot. On Monday morning, crowds of 
Christians were seen fleeing precipitately from 
the city. Some, among whom were respectable 
merchants, hastened toward the mountains, 
and finding refuge in a khan under the Emeer 
Besheer's protection, stopped to breathe. Pass- 
ing them soon after, I was about to inquire the 
cause of their fears, when, to my surprise, they 



21 

asked the same question of myself, not knowing 
wherefore they had fled ! My first impulse was 
to smile at their causeless alarm ; the second, to 
weep for their condition, which made such an 
alarm possible. Imagine, if you can, the change 
that must take place here, before such an alarm 
could be experienced by yourselves. It proved 
that two priests, sixty or seventy miles distant, 
had quarrelled and been imprisoned. The re- 
port, growing, as it moved, and meeting at 
Beyroot with fears made sensitive by a series of 
extortions and barbarities, in which, under the 
observation of the missionaries, individuals had 
been causelessly bastinadoed till they could not 
walk, had caused the alarm. — Similar, though 
in most cases far slighter, is the fearfulness of 
native Christians throughout Turkey. Who 
that has been there does not know their pro- 
verbial timidity, and that it imparts itself to 
Europeans brought up among them ? What 
will they not sacrifice for European protection 1 
For it, not less than a hundred thousand Ar- 
menians, when Mr. Dwight and myself were in 
their country, emigrated from their homes to the 
Russian territories, seeking under the despotism 
of Russia, a refuge from the unfeeling abuses 
and cruelties of Turkey. 



22 

A principal cause of this arrogance and cru- 
elty of Mohammedans, lies in the doctrines of 
their religion. That religion not only condemns 
all Christians to the fires of hell, but obligates 
its professors to compel them to adopt their 
creed, or submit to their yoke, upon penalty of 
death. Not that its exclusiveness alone fosters 
cruelty. Pure Christianity is exclusive ; and its 
very exclusiveness, joined with the duty of 
making converts by persuasion, calls into ex- 
ercise the most charitable and compassionate 
feelings of the heart. It is the main spring of 
missions. The exclusiveness of Mohammedan- 
ism, on the contrary, being joined with the 
duty of making converts by force of arms, leads 
directly to the exercise of arrogance and blood- 
thirsty cruelty. The exclusiveness of papacy, 
also, connected with the duty it inculcates of 
destroying heretics, has the same influence upon 
the disposition. In this part of their practical 
effect, the religions of the false prophet and of 
the beast, harmonize. 

As proof that the cruelty of Mohammedans 
springs from their religion, may be adduced 
the fact, that it is exercised chiefly toward the 
members of other sects. They treat each other 
as brethren. — In returning from Persia, our 



23 

company came near perishing in a tempestuous 
snow-storm, on one of the highest mountains 
of Armenia. A part of us succeeded in 
reaching the stable of a Mohammedan, just 
before dark. An Armenian youth, and a Mo- 
hammedan muleteer in our employ, lingered on 
the mountain some hours later. As they entered 
the stable, the Armenian, who had hardly been 
out of a city in his life before, sunk almost 
motionless upon the ground, his limbs had a 
death-like coldness, and the only words he 
uttered were that he was dead, The old Mo- 
hammedan sneered at his cries. Our request 
for some dry clothing for the sufferer, he only 
laughed at ; and at the same moment took off a 
part of his own dress and gave to the muleteer, 
a Kurd, as hardy as the beasts he drove, saying 
to a friend, that God would reckon it to him for 
a good deed. It was meritorious to help a Mo- 
hammedan, but upon the Christian he felt no 
obligation to show compassion, and went off to 
bed, refusing to give him a morsel of bread, 
although he had already fed the Mohammedan; 
and, only by paying a servant after he was gone, 
could we procure fuel for a fire. 

Ignorance and disinclination to improvement 
is another prominent effect of Mohammedanism. 
Ten years since, the Turks were hardly farther 



24 

advanced than when they first entered Constan- 
tinople, nearly four centuries ago. They had 
schools indeed, and many of them could read. 
But their education was almost exclusively 
limited to their religion, and made them dis- 
parage every other species of knowledge, and 
every source of information not Mohammedan. 
Europe had gone forward in her improvements, 
but Moslem arrogance made them look down 
with sovereign contempt upon them all, and ex- 
clude them for their infidel origin. They even 
cared not to know any thing of foreign nations ; 
an almost entire ignorance of the geography of 
Europe was universal. Of our own country, 
they even now know still less. In the interior 
of Turkey, very rarely did we find an individual 
that had heard of the name of America. They 
had only learned that such a place as the New 
World exists ; but whether it was inhabited by 
Christians, Mohammedans, or heathen, they 
knew not. Mohammedanism had within itself 
no germ of improvement, and when thus hedged 
about by arrogance, all advance was at a stand, 
and centuries rolled by and brought no melio- 
rating changes. The present sultan has indeed 
thrown open the door for innovations from 
Europe ; but the fact that he is charged for it, 
by the more sincere of his countrymen, with 



25 

infidelity, shows that he is acting contrary to the 
genius of Mohammedanism. 

Another still of the bad effects of Mohamme- 
danism upon its professors is its sensuality. No 
one, whom familiar intercourse and understand- 
ing their language have not introduced to the 
recesses of their character, can conceive how 
awfully the peculiar doctrines of the Koran on 
this subject, have corrupted their conduct and 
polluted their hearts. It is a wonder of mercy 
that God does not, in hot displeasure, rain upon 
their land fire and brimstone out of heaven, as 
he did upon the cities of the plain for similar 
abominations. But propriety allows me to say 
no more than may enable you to imagine, how 
contrary is the religion of Mohammed to that of 
Christ, in its influence upon moral purity. How 
far it is from being the salt of the earth. 

Not only is it detrimental to the personal 
character of its professors, but it paralyzes in- 
dustry, and is a curse to the temporal conditio?! 
of man. The Turkish empire embraces the 
fairest portions of the globe ; once crowded with 
a dense population, smiling under high agricul- 
tural improvement, the nursery of science and 
the arts, and the birth-place of our holy religion. 
And were soil and climate alone sufficient, it 
would now be surpassed by no country on earth 
3 



26 

in the prosperity and happiness of its inhabitants. 
But when 

" only man is vile, 

In vain with lavish kindness 
The gifts of God are strown.'* 

Egypt, the granary of the surrounding regions 
in the time of Jacob, is stilly owing to the fer- 
tilizing overflowings of the Nile, scarcely less 
distinguished for its productiveness. Never did 
my eye survey a prospect of more exuberant 
fertility than when standing on the summit 
of one of the pyramids of Gizeh, and looking 
up the narrow valley of the Nile, and down 
upon the opening plain of the Delta. But 
the cradle of civilization is now the abode 
of oppression^ poverty, and wretchedness. The 
cultivator of the soil is liable to be bastina-* 
doed for eating of the produce of his own fields, 
until he has sold them to the pasha, and 
bought them of him again at his own price. 
Persons are said to be reduced by poverty to 
absolute nakedness in some of the villages of 
Upper Egypt. And the maimed, the halt, and 
the blind, revolting pictures of penury and dis- 
ease, that almost obstruct the streets of Cairo, 
are far more numerous than I have found them 
elsewhere. We hear much of the improvements 
of Mohammed Ali, but all are intended to in- 



27 

crease his power and his income, none for the 
benefit of his people. 

The hills and plains of Philistia are still 
beautiful. Their verdure was magically en- 
chanting, as I found myself transported, by a 
night's ride, from the arid sands of the desert 
into the midst of them, on a beautiful morning 
in February. But the flocks of the Bedaween 
were roaming over them ; a camel's yard was 
the lodging place that Gaza afforded us ; and we 
found only solitary fishermen upon the rocks 
under the proud walls of Ascalon. No culti- 
vation appears in Phenicia between Tyre and 
Sidon, although one extended plain. The moun- 
tains of Canaan are no longer clothed with the 
vine. The wandering Arab pitches his tent on 
the broad plain of Jezreel. And a few miser- 
able villages and decayed towns now occupy the 
region, once, under the genial influence of the 
religion of the Bible, crowded with the densest 
population. 

The extensive regions of Asia Minor, formerly 
adorned with the perfection of Grecian art and 
agriculture, and still behind no other country I 
have seen in the beauty of their scenery of 
wooded mountains and fertile plains, smiling 
under the finest of climates, are now run to 
waste. The wild Kurd and Turkman, wander- 
ing predatory shepherds, pitch their tents there ; 



28 

and a few inhabitants living in filth and wretch- 
edness, with scarcely any of the comforts of 
civilized life, cultivate but a very small part of 
the excellent soil that God has given them. 

In Armenia, always celebrated for its adapt- 
ness to the growth of grain and the raising of 
herds and flocks; an extremely thin population 
live miserably in cabins sunk half under ground, 
and in the coldest months often lodge with their 
cattle. Stables were actually the accommoda- 
tions most frequently offered Mr. Dwight and 
myself in travelling through that country. 

It may perhaps be said, that this perversion 
and waste of the gifts of heaven, is owing to 
oppressive governments. But where is there an 
independent government that does not derive its 
character from its subjects? A good and enlight- 
ened people, unless subject to a foreign power, 
will always work out for themselves a good and 
enlightened government. To the people them- 
selves must we look for the cause of their 
misery ; especially when soil and climate com- 
bine for their prosperity. And to what can the 
faults of their character be owing, but to a re- 
ligion, sapping the foundations of morality, and 
paralyzing industry ? And besides, it must not 
be forgotten that the Turkish government is the 
creature of Mohammedanism. The Koran, the 
Bible of the Turk, is the law of the land. 



29 

Do you ask, why has Providence suffered such 
a religion to overrun and blight such fair portions 
of the globe ? With this question my own 
feelings have been often tried, as the facts I 
have alluded to have pressed themselves upon 
my observation. The following answer first 
satisfied myself as I was reflecting upon it, in 
view of one of the finest tracts of Asia Minor, 
now almost deserted. Had Mohammedanism 
never spread beyond the deserts of Arabia, its 
effect upon human happiness might still have 
remained doubtful Now the experiment has 
been fairly tried, in circumstances the most 
favorable for benefiting man, if such be its ten^ 
dency. The result is found in extensive and 
fertile regions almost desolate and run to waste, 
and man, in the midst of nature's richest gifts 
of soil and climate, sunk in semi-barbarism, 
poverty, and wretchedness. Skepticism itself 
can no longer doubt that Mohammedanism is 
destructive to temporal prosperity, and a curse to 
man. Contrast with it the humanizing and 
meliorating influence of pure Christianity 
wherever it is introduced, even in the most 
adverse circumstances ; see it originating and 
cherishing industry, intelligence, prosperity, and 
happiness, among the volcanoes, rocks, and 
snows of Iceland : and you have the strongest 
3* 



30 

possible argument for the divine origin of the 
religion of the Bible. It is, in distinction from 
all other religions the world has ever seen, the 
salt of the earth. 

But our Saviour intimates, that the salt may 
lose its savor. His description of it in this 
state, is singularly applicable to the present 
character and condition of Christianity in West- 
ern Asia. The salt has lost its savor ; it is good 
for nothing ; it is cast out and trodden under 
foot of men. Christianity has lost the essential 
principles of the gospel; — Its beneficial influ- 
ence upon man has ceased ; — It is despised and 
oppressed. Under these several heads I will 
now give you the result of observations made 
upon Roman. Catholics, Greeks, Copts, Arme- 
nians, Georgians, and Nestorians, the six differ- 
ent Christian nations and sects, with which I 
have had to do. 

The Copts are a relic of the ancient Egyptian 
church, forming a body of a hundred and fifty or 
two hundred thousand souls, among the Moham- 
medan Arabs of Egypt. The Greeks occupy 
Greece and its islands, are numerous in Europe- 
an Turkey, and scattered through Asia Minor, 
composing a nation of more than 3,000,000. 
Many of the Arabs of Syria also, are of the 



31 

Greek church. The Georgian nation professes 
the same faith, and consists of about 500,000 
souls, living at the southern base of Mount 
Caucasus, between the Black and Caspian seas. 
The Armenians are a distinct nation, amounting 
perhaps to 2,000,000. Their country lies be- 
tween Asia Minor and Persia ; but they are 
also widely scattered elsewhere. The Nestori- 
ans are a branch of the Syrian race, inhabiting 
the mountains of Kurdistan, on the western 
borders of Persia, and number not far from 
100,000. The native Roman Catholics referred 
to, consist of perhaps 150,000 Maltese in 
Malta and elsewhere, about 100,000 Maronites 
in Mount Lebanon, and some thousands of con- 
verts to papacy from the other sects just enu- 
merated. 

Christianity , as now understood and believed 
by them all, has lost the essential principles of 
the gospel. You will allow me to substantiate 
this position by giving, somewhat in detail, a 
view of their leading doctrines. Their views of 
the trinity, and of the divine and human natures 
of Christ, indeed, are not unscriptural ; although 
for the use of peculiar language on the latter 
subject, the Nestorians and Armenians were 
early excluded from the general church. But of 
the way of salvation through the agency of th© 



32 

Son and of the Spirit, they have very imperfect 
views, 

Deliverance from the guilt and punishment of 
original sin, is a primary part of their scheme. 
For they imagine that the sin of Adam brought 
guilt upon all his posterity, (except the virgin 
Mary,) and subjected them to a captivity to 
Satan, from which none were delivered until 
the death of Christ ; even the good men who 
died previously, being excluded from heaven, 
and shut up with " the spirits in prison." Christ 
first opened to them the gates of heaven, when 
he paid, with his life, the ransom of their de?- 
liverance. While in the grave he went and 
preached to the departed spirits, and carried the 
believers triumphantly to heaven. 

To men on earth, the efficacy of his death for 
the pardon of sin is applied, they believe, by bap- 
tism and hy penance. Baptism cancels guilt ; it 
is regeneration ; it effects justification. Through 
jts instrumentality does the blood of Christ 
wash away the guilt and rescue from the punish- 
ment of original sin, and of all actual sins previr 
ously committed. In every case of its adminis- 
tration, the heart is regenerated. Of other 
regeneration I have found every body entirely 
ignorant. The Holy Spirit thus comes to be 



33 

practically neglected, and aside from the general 
idea that he is the author of all good, I have 
heard none ascribe to him any special operations 
unconnected with baptism. To be told, when 
come to years, that they must be born again by the 
Spirit renewing their hearts, seems as strange to 
them all, as did the same doctrine to Nicodemus 
when announced to him by our Saviour. Bap- 
tism is also the instrumental cause of justifica- 
tion. This is the very language of the council 
of Trent, the highest authority of the Romish 
church, respecting it. In fact the whole doc- 
trine of justification is virtually resolved, by 
that council, into baptism. Hence results 
a practical ignorance of faith. It is regarded 
as no more than a general assent of the under- 
standing to the doctrinces and creeds of their 
churches. Of the justifying, saving faith of 
the heart, the distinguishing doctrine of protes- 
tantism and of the gospel, I have found every 
where the most entire ignorance. 

In a word, baptism never fails to transfer its 
subject from a state of nature to a state of grace. 
It knocks off the shackles of original sin and of 
Satan, and sets men at liberty to work their way 
to heaven. Progress is made by observing the 
laws of God, and the rites of the church ; the 
latter of which, such as fasting, masses, saying 



34 

prayers, pilgrimages, and the like, unfortunately, 
in practice, almost entirely crowd the former, 
the laws of God, out of mind. This race of 
merit, though hindered indeed, is not stopped 
by daily sins, provided they be but slight. For, 
by their books, sins are divided into little and 
great, or venial and deadly. Venial sins are not 
fatal to the soul, and are cancelled by the merit 
of the same observances, that carries them on 
toward heaven. 

Of these observances, mass is the principal, 
and deserves a moment's attention. It is, you 
must know, the consecration of the elements of 
the Lord's supper. By partaking of these ele- 
ments, venial sins are believed to be wiped away, 
and the soul fed with spiritual food. But this is 
done hardly more than twice or thrice a year. 
The mass has a higher efficacy. Its principal 
object is not to remind penitent and grateful 
communicants of the death of Christ. It is re- 
garded as a renewal of that death itself. By a 
transubstantiating change at the pronouncing of 
the consecrating words, fC this is my body," the 
elements, they say, cease to be bread and wine, 
and come ' truly, really, and substantially, to con- 
tain the body and blood, together with the soul 
and divinity of Christ.' Hence he is crucified 
afresh, an expiatory sacrifice for sin, every time 



35 

the ceremony of consecration is performed, which 
is, in most churches, almost every morning in 
the year. Says the catechism of the council 
of Trent, " We confess that the sacrifice which 
is performed in the mass, and that which was 
offered on the cross, is, and is to be held as, one 
and the same sacrifice," " nor are the bloody 
and unbloody host (victim) two, but one." Its 
merit attaches not only to the offerer and the 
partaker, but to all the faithful, living and dead ; 
especially to those, who, by paying the priest, or 
by some other service, have their names mention- 
ed in the prayers which form a part of the cere- 
mony. Incredible as this absurdity appears, it 
is most fully believed, and often repeated argu- 
ment has convinced me, that, as it is the greatest 
error of those erring churches, it is the one to 
which they are most obstinately attached. 

Its evils are incalculable. It substitutes a 
priesthood to offer sacrifices^ for a ministry to 
feed the flock of God with sound doctrine ; it 
detracts from the efficacy of the death of Christ ; 
it converts the spiritual worship of God into the 
formal adoration of a ceremony ; it leads to 
idolatry. — Preaching is considered, by none of 
the churches of which I am speaking, the lead- 
ing duty of the clergy. Saying mass is their 
business, and is carefully attended to almost 



36 

daily ; but from Sabbath to Sabbath, rarely is a 
sermon preached. In the whole of Armenia 
we had an opportunity to hear only one ; and a 
pulpit we did not find in a single church. — The 
importance of that great sacrifice for sin which 
was offered once for all, is necessarily depre- 
ciated by the idea of a continually repeated 
sacrihca. The death of Christ, has in fact 
come, in the estimation of the people at large, 
to rank little higher than a simple antidote to 
original sin. In the Armenian church, this idea 
is sanctioned by one of its most revered ancient 
fathers. He says, " If Christ by being once 
offered a sacrifice on the cross, put away the sin 
of man's nature derived from Adam ; when he 
is offered many times, [meaning in the mass,] 
what sin can it be that the heavenly Father will 
not pardon on account of the sacrifice of his 
only begotten Son ?" 

By this exaltation of the eucharist into an ex- 
piatory offering to God, not only does the par- 
taking of the elements by the people come to be 
considered quite unessential to its celebration, 
and generally neglected ; but it results also in 
practice, that their uniting in the prayers of the 
occasion even, is deemed quite unnecessary. 
They need not understand the language ; they 
need not even hear it. Let them only see and 



37 

adore the ceremony, and their part is per- 
formed. — In this way do persons in quarantine 
at Malta attend mass. It is said in a little open 
chapel, high on the city wall, across the harbor. 
The worshippers stand in boats on the water, 
and in front of the Lazaretto on the other side, 
so distant that I have actually been able only by 
a spy-glass, to discern the motions of the offi- 
ciating priest. Bat they are warned by a bell of 
the most solemn parts of the ceremony, and 
making their genuflexions and crosses, go away 
satisfied that they have, to all intents and pur- 
poses, attended church. 

The idolatry of the mass is absolute and ex- 
plicit. The council of Trent says ; " No room for 
doubt is left, that all the faithful in Christ should, 
according to the ever-received custom of the 
Catholic church, in veneration give to this most 
holy sacrament the homage of worship (latrim) 
which is due to the true God." And it adds the 
following canon ; "if any one says, that in the 
holy sacrament of the eucharist, the only begot- 
ten Son of God is not to be adored with the 

homage of worship (latrice) even externally ; 

nor to be solemnly carried about in processions 
according to the laudable and universal rites and 
customs of the holy church ; or that it is not to 
be publicly placed before the people, to be 
4 



38 

adored ; and that its worshippers are idolaters ; 
anathema sit, let him be accursed." Conform- 
ably to this command, whenever the consecrated 
wafer, (the bread of the sacrament,) is carried 
to the dying at Malta, it is attended with a pomp- 
ous procession ; and all whom it passes uncover 
their heads and kneel down in the streets, 
wherever they happen to be, to worship it. The 
scene recurs daily. Papists may pretend that 
their worship of images is not idolatry, as they 
only pay inferior homage to the saints whom 
they represent. But here is idolatry, ordered by 
the church, in the plainest language that can be 
used, under penalty of excommunication. 

You have now seen how original sin is dis- 
posed of; and how, notwithstanding many venial 
sins, the soul works its way toward heaven. 
We come next to deadly sins. They are fatal 
to the soul, extinguish grace, and expose it to 
eternal punishment. And so various and com- 
mon are they, in the estimation of casuistic 
theology, that, in those regions at least, every 
body commits them almost daily. Where can 
the soul burdened with them go for pardon and 
restoration ? To the merits of Christ through 
faith alone, it is never directed, nor to the 
sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. It 
has but one resource, and that is, to the con- 



39 

fessional of the priests. As by baptism only can 
the merit of Christ's death be applied to the re- 
mission of original sin ; so by auricular confes- 
sion only, or the sacrament of penance of which 
confession forms an essential part, can it be ap- 
plied to the remission of deadly actual sin com- 
mitted by baptized persons. Says the conncil of 
Trent, u the sacrament of penance is not less 
necessary to the fallen after baptism, than bap* 
tism to the not yet regenerate/ 5 i. e. unbaptized, 
" For as, when a vessel is cast away, only one 
resort for saving life remains, if perchance some 
plank of the wreck may be laid hold of; so after 
the loss of the innocence of baptism, unless one 
fly to the plank of penance, his salvation is 
without doubt to be despaired of." God has 
provided no other refuge. To the priests has 
he surrendered his power of pardon. The par* 
don comes, indeed, from him, but he has so 
ordered that it can be procured by the sinner 
only through the absolution of the priests. So 
that only by going to them in confession actu- 
ally, or if that be impracticable, in desire, 
instead of to himself directly, can pardon be 
obtained. 

The Armenian church prescribes a form of 
confession, which is repeated memoriter, or 
from the mouth of the priest, on every occasion. 



40 

After a long catalogue of the blackest sins, 
which, if time did not, decency would prohibit 
me from repeating : the penitent concludes by- 
addressing the priest thus. " Holy father, 
[meaning the priest,] I have thee for an inter- 
cessor, and a mediator of reconciliation, with 
the only begotten Son of God ; that, by the 
power given unto thee, thou wouldest loose me 
from the bonds of my sins, thee I supplicate." 
The priest then absolves him in the following 
words. " May a compassionate God have mercy 
upon thee ; may he pardon all thy confessed 
and forgotten sins. And I, by right of my 
priestly authority, and the divine command, 
e whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be 
loosed in heaven ; } by that same word do ab- 
solve thee from all participation in thy sins, of 
thought, of word, and of deed, in the name of 
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost. And I admit thee again to the sacra- 
ments of the holy church, and whatever good 
thou mayest do, may it be reckoned to thee for 
a good work, and in the future life for glory. 
Amen." 

He is now ready to start afresh in his race of 
merit. To the efficacy of this ceremony con- 
trition of heart is indeed supposed, in theory, to 
be essential. But in practice, the people are 



41 

rarely taught by their priests to feel its necessity. 
The ignorant especially, who form the great 
mass of the community, go away from the con^ 
fessional fully satisfied, that, by the mere ex- 
ternal form, their sins are cancelled. 

The pardon pronounced by the priest, how^ 
ever, is not absolute. Grace is indeed restored, 
and eternal punishment remitted ; but a tempor 
rary punishment remains. Before, the soul was 
exposed to sink into hell forever under deadly 
sins; now, divine justice is satisfied by its un^ 
dergoing certain temporary penances, such as 
fasting, almsgiving, saying prayers, and the 
like, which are laid upon it by the priest. 
These are the fruits meet for repentance ; and 
are supposed in theory to chasten and correct 
the sinful propensities of the heart. But the 
great and only agent of sanctification being 
overlooked, they are necessarily impotent, and, 
so far as my observation has extended, are in 
fact mere heartless ceremonies. 

The fasts are not attended, either in the pre- 
scriptions of the church, or in the practice of 
the people, with more religious services than 
ordinary days ; labor is not expected to be at all 
suspended ; they are merely the substituting of 
a less for a more palatable and nutritious diet. 
Instead of entering heartily into their spiritual 
4* 



42 

intent, all regard them as a heavy burden ; and, 
though shocked at the idea of breaking them, 
every one feels at liberty to complain of their 
irksomeness, and keeps with double zest the 
feast which generally ends them. On the eve- 
ning of a fast-day in Armenia, we found our lot 
cast for the night in a room-full of native Chris- 
tian travellers. Their church proscribed on 
such days all animal food, and they made a 
silent supper of bread and onions, and lay down 
to sleep. Soon after midnight the sound of 
animated conversation awaked us. They were 
seated around a table on the middle of the 
floor, and, the canonical hours of the fast being 
over, were regaling themselves heartily on joints 
of meat which had been reserved for the pur- 
pose. 

Alms are bestowed more for the spiritual 
benefit of the givej, than for the relief of the re- 
ceiver. The former wishes their merit; whether 
the circumstances of the latter call for their aid, 
he often stops not to inquire. Beggars, in fact, 
stand in the attitude of helpers to salvation. 
Hence begging becomes a profession. It is so, 
extensively, wherever I have been, and I think 
I am not mistaken in attributing the fact, partly 
at least, to the prevalent systems of religion. 

The supposed efficacy of prayers has no con- 



43 

nection with sincerity in the offerer. For, with 
the single exception of the Arabic branch of the 
Greek church, in none of the churches of which 
I am speaking, are the prayers in a language 
understood by the people. Standing in the 
centre of Armenia, at the foot of Mount Ararat 
where Noah offered his memorable sacrifice, I 
could look around upon five or six nations and 
sects, Mohammedan and Christian, comprising 
the whole population of the country, not one of 
which worships God in a language it under- 
stands. Praying is as completely a task of the 
lips, as a joiner's work is of his hands. To 
break off in the middle of a prayer to reprove a 
child, or give directions for business, is hardly 
regarded as improper. I have witnessed it times 
without number, and often in priests at the altar. 
Where is the sincerity of such prayers? The 
mere labor of the ceremony, and repetition of 
the words parrot-like, is regarded as rendering 
God an acceptable service ; no matter what is 
the language used. We attended evening 
prayers in a village in Armenia inhabited by 
Armenians and Greeks. They were too poor to 
have each a church, and their altars were side 
by side in one underground room. Only the 
Armenians had a priest, and theirs were the 
prayers that were said. But neither party failed 



44 

of being accommodated; for while the Armenians 
prostrated and crossed themselves before their 
altar, an old Greek, listening to the same pray-? 
ers, made Greek bows and crosses before his. 
The language used was unintelligible to both. 

It is important to follow out this strange 
system of salvation to the future world. Who- 
ever dies before baptism, whether aged heathen 
or the babe of yesterday, must go away into 
everlasting perdition. Equally hopeless is the 
case of all the baptized who die in deadly sins 
unconfessed. He that dies after baptism, and 
before committing sin, is admitted immediately 
to heaven ; and the same is true of him that 
has completed his penance for deadly sins. But 
if death overtakes one after confession, and 
while his penance is incomplete ; he cannot be 
sent to hell, nor yet is he prepared for heaven. 
He must first complete his penance in a tempo-? 
rary state of misery. This state is called by the 
papists, purgatory ; the other churches reject 
the name, but cleave most obstinately to the 
thing. All believe that the sufferings of the 
departed, who are thus detained from heaven, 
may be shortened by the merit of good deeds of 
surviving relatives imputed to them. Hence 
prayers for the dead are often repeated in 
churches and over graves ; masses too are cele* 



45 

brated in their name ; and the traveller is often 
solicited for charity for the souls in purgatory. 
In Malta, a crier goes through the streets every 
Monday, with a box in one hand and a bell in 
the other, begging for the souls. 

In this statement of doctrine I have had 
specially in view the papal and Armenian 
churches. With the boohs of the others, I am 
less acquainted ; in their current views and 
practice, as I have learned them from personal 
intercourse, they in no respect essentially differ, 
on the points of which I have spoken — except 
that the Nestorians entirely renounce auricular 
confession. But I have been unable to learn 
that they look, any more than their neighbors, 
to the merits of Christ alone for pardon. Nor 
do they know of any other regeneration than 
baptism. 

The papists add the doctrine of indulgences, 
which, so far as I am informed, is admitted by 
none of the other churches. Besides the re- 
mission of eternal punishment by the absolution 
of the priest at confession ; the pope is believed 
to have the power of remitting also the temporary 
punishment or penance, whether in this world or 
in purgatory. Such remissions are indulgences. 
He delegates his power in different ways, and 
they are doled out in all parts of the papal world 



46 

to whomsoever, by giving money under the 
name of charity, or performing certain cere-r 
monies, will merit them. In some churches 
complete remission at once of all penitential 
and purgatorial pains is offered ; and "plenary 
indulgence every day for the living and the 
dead," is inscribed on their fronts in characters 
that can be read a quarter of a mile. Others, 
on certain days only, have "plenary indulgence" 
hung out upon placards at their doors ; or per- 
haps an offer of indulgence for only a number 
of weeks or days. 

Where now in this outline of the leading 
doctrines believed by the nominal Christians of 
the East, are found the great evangelical points 
which are the fundamentals of our faith ; the 
preaching of which produces revivals of religion, 
and causes men to ask what they shall do to be 
saved ? Or were this all-important question 
asked, what answer to it would such a system 
of salvation suggest? Certainly not the answer 
of the Apostles, ' repent and believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ/ I will give you the answer of an 
Armenian bishop in Persia, one of the most 
intelligent I have seen. He had been question- 
ing us respecting the perpetual virginity of the 
mother of Christ, and upon our declaring that 
the subject had never been agitated among us, 



47 

had exclaimed with astonishment, ' Why ! you 
are priests, what do you find to preach about, 
when such points as this are neglected V ' The 
fundamental doctrines of the gospel/ we replied, 
6 the death of Christ for the sins of the world, 
and the way of salvation through him.' And 
then we asked him directly, ' What must we do 
to be saved V He answered, as if we had asked 
a very unnecessary question, ' Why ! we are 
saved already, and need only confess, do pen- 
ance, commune, and the like, and we shall go 
to heaven ! ' Such is the way of salvation to 
which immortal souls are directed in the fallen 
churches of the East ! It is not a way of sal- 
vation by faith, for the doctrine of justifying 
faith is unknown ; nor of salvation by good 
works, such as industry, uprightness, and benev- 
olence ; but of salvation by ceremonies. It neg- 
lects equally the gospel and the law ; and would 
send men to heaven without grace, and without 
morality. Surely such a Christianity is destitute 
of the essential principles of the gospel. The 
salt has lost its savor. 

This corrupt Christianity has also lost its 
beneficial influence : both upon its professors and 
upon others. — Not that it has no influence. For 
it is not wanting in appeals to the fears of men. 
In attempts to depict the horrors of the damned, 



48 

whether in hell or in the fabled purgatory, it 
can hardly be exceeded. Continually are the 
priests filling the minds of the people with the 
most awful ideas of future wo. Imagination is 
racked to frame pictures and statues of the most 
unheard-of torments. The papists often sur- 
mount the walls of their cemeteries with statues 
of human busts surrounded by flames of fire, to 
remind every passer-by of the souls in the fires 
of purgatory. This is the case with almost 
every burying ground in Malta. And pictures 
of the judgment adorn some Armenian churches, 
so filled with dragons, devils, flaming fire, and 
every species of horrid form and face, that one 
shudders to look upon them. Such means to ex- 
cite fears of future torment are effectual. By no 
people, perhaps, is the eternal world looked at 
with more dread. Of them, it may be most 
emphatically said, that " through fear of death 
they are all their life-time subject to bondage." — 
But, alas ! this fear is not so directed as to pro- 
duce any beneficial results. It leads neither to 
reconciliation with God by true piety ; nor to the 
avoiding of sin by morality ; but to the ob- 
servance of ceremonies. 

In all my observations, I have never found 
in one native Christian satisfactory evidence of 
piety, unless he had been converted through 



49 

missionary instrumentality. A respected mis- 
sionary brother, now laboring in Syria, once 
made to me the following remark, and other 
mission aries ; experience does not differ from his. 
' I hoped/ he observed, ' when I came to this 
country, some years ago, that as I travelled from 
village to village, and preached salvation to the 
people ; in the assemblies which should listen 
to me, would now and then some devout Cor- 
nelius be found, waiting to know the way of 
God more perfectly, and ready to bless me as a 
bearer of glad tidings. But I have found none. 
Not a heart has responded with pleasure to the 
truth.' 

As to the influence of this religion to restrain 
its professors from sin, you would soon be con- 
vinced that it is small, did time and propriety 
allow me to detail at length their vices. — We 
will look a moment, first at the priesthood. The 
monastic clergy, of every sect, are a demoralized 
class of men ; many being sunk to the lowest 
depths of sensual indulgence, and almost all 
having their consciences hardened, and per- 
ception of right and wrong blunted. Bound, in 
their isolated condition, by none of the strongest 
ties of nature to the interests of others, and in- 
fluenced to benevolence by no principles of 
divine grace, unrestrained selfishness wraps its 
5 



50 

thickest folds around them ; leading some to the 
grossest gratification of the senses, and others to 
the lowest arts of gain for the acquisition of 
wealth, or into the darkest windings of intrigue 
at the instigation of ambition, filling them with 
all subtlety, Especially are their convents the 
hot-beds of these sins. But the scenes acted in 
them, as described to me by their inmates them- 
selves, may not be unveiled. You would turn 
from them with disgust and horror. The paro- 
chial clergy of the Greek and all the other 
Oriental churches, being bound to the rest of 
the community by conjugal and parental ties^ 
have less of a distinctive character. By a cus- 
tom of the Armenian church, however, a part of 
their support arises from invitations to certain 
feasts that often occur, and they consequently 
become proverbial for excessive eating and 
drinking. So strong is the temptation, as to 
corrupt such of them as were of good habits 
before entering the clerical profession. 

The character of the laity is no better than 
might be expected to result from the example of 
such a priesthood. Owing perhaps to the sum- 
mary and severe modes of executing justice in 
Turkey, murder, robbery, and theft indeed, 
(with the exception of certain districts where 
robbery is openly practised as an honorable 



51 

profession,) are not so frequent as in some parts 
of Europe. But the meaner vices, of falsehood, 
dishonesty, profaneness, and sensuality, not re- 
garded by the law as crimes against the state, 
are awfully prevalent. 

In the emphatic language of Scripture, doubly 
emphatic there, " truth is fallen in the streets." 
It is trodden under foot. I have often heard 
the oldest missionary in those regions declare 
his belief that not a man of strict truth could be 
found. Less experience, perhaps, would lead 
me to make a few exceptions. But they would 
be very few. So often have my most common 
questions been answered by falsehood, when no 
possible reason for it appeared, but either a per- 
verse love of lying or an unwillingness to be 
troubled with the accuracy of truth, that I have 
found it safe to credit no information until it 
has been confirmed by cross-questioning, or by 
concurring circumstances. Men the most re- 
spectable in the estimation of society, daily lie 
and deceive, without seeming to imagine that it 
can be considered even dishonorable. False- 
hood is generally, I had almost said universally, 
regarded as neither wrong nor condemned by 
religion, except when injury to others is the 
designed object of it. In fact, experience has 
proved, that so thoroughly is deceit bound up in 



52 

their hearts, that even when divine grace takes 
possession, a clear discrimination and just esti- 
mate of truth is one of the latest of its fruits to 
ripen. 

The kindred vice of dishonesty in business, is 
not less common. That it is wrong, their un- 
derstandings will often admit ; but circumstances 
are generally urged as an apology. ' It is indeed 
sinful/ they will say, c but how can we live in 
the world without it ? Are we shut up in a 
convent, that we should be able to live honestly ? 3 
The conviction seems to be deeply seated, that 
dishonesty has entered so thoroughly into the 
management of every kind of business, that for 
an henest man to obtain a livelihood is im- 
possible. It used often to trouble a devoutly 
pious Arab youth, who acted as my teacher in 
Syria. He had been in business before becom- 
ing pious, and knew how it was conducted. 
And in anticipation of entering it again, he had 
the most desponding expectations that an honest 
course would reduce him to beggary. 

Of the prevalence of profaneness, I can give 
you no adequate conception. It is universal. 
Even false oaths are little thought of; and the 
name of God is daily and hourly profaned and 
trifled with by every body, without remorse. The 
habits of priests even, form no general exception. 



53 

Drunkenness, I am ashamed to say, is less 
common than among our own countrymen ; 
owing to other causes, however, than moral or 
religious restraint. For, living among Moslems, 
to whom all inebriating drinks are forbidden by 
the Koran, they seem to have the impression 
that liberty to use them is one of the distinguish- 
ing advantages of Christianity. And though 
habitual drunkenness is not common, they oc- 
casionally drink to excess, without seeming to 
imagine themselves guilty of conduct unbecom- 
ing Christians. 

The grosser sensual indulgences, which form 
the dark shades of the picture, propriety requires 
me to pass over without offending you with a 
description. — Scripture has summed up their 
character in the graphic language of inspiration : 
" All have gone out of the way ; there is none 
that doeth good, no not one ; their throat is an 
open sepulchre ; with their tongues they have 
used deceit ; the poison of asps is under their 
lips ; their mouth is full of cursing and bitter- 
ness ; destruction and misery are in their ways ; 
and the way of peace they have not known ,* 
there is no fear of God before their eyes." 

Do you ask, why, with such awful views of 
future punishment held up constantly before 
them, men continue to pursue such sinful 
5* 



54 

courses ? It is not because they do not know 
that they are sinful. For they are not ignorant 
that most of their evil practices are wicked, 
and the very ones upon which the dreaded 
punishments are threatened. It is because they 
are directed elsewhere for escape, than to that 
fountain that cleanses the heart from sin and 
from uncleanness. 

I am not aware that any false religion, from 
the classic fables of ancient Greece and Rome, 
to the complicated mythology of India, and the 
simpler dreamings of the American savage, has 
ever been wanting in vivid delineations of future 
punishment. And yet far have all such re- 
ligions been from preventing vice and promoting 
virtue. The reason is, tJiey contrive to relieve 
the conscience from fear, by ceremonies which 
release not the heart from sin. And such I be- 
lieve to be the object of every form of super- 
stition. The natural man has two opposing 
principles within him ; a wicked heart enticing 
him to sin, and conscience warning him against 
it by holding up its consequences. Only one 
religion reconciles the two by changing the 
heart till it speaks out in a holy life the same 
voice as conscience ; and that is the religion of 
the Bible. All others, being in fact a contriv- 
ance of the heart for its own indulgence, leave 



55 

the heart undisturbed, and go about to silence 
or pervert the warnings of conscience. This 
they accomplish by prescribing certain exter- 
nal, physical ceremonies as a compromise for 
sin, and persuading conscience that they are 
an effectual preventive of punishment. 

So is it with the forms of false Christianity of 
which I am speaking. By none of their rites do 
they correct the heart. The sanctifying in- 
fluences of the Spirit are forgotten. And the 
love of sin is left to luxuriate and grow strong 
as the dominant principle of the soul. But 
great pains is taken to silence conscience' loud 
warnings of future wrath, by a tedious round of 
superstitious observances. The guilty soul, in- 
stead of going, by repentance and faith, directly 
to Christ for pardon, frequents the confessor's 
chair, trusting in the priestly absolution for the 
remission of sin ; and hopes by painful penances 
to make satisfaction for its transgressions. In 
the technicalities of papal theology indeed, what 
we usually call penances, are termed satisfac- 
tions, satisfactions for sin. The practical ope- 
ration of the system is like that of debt and 
credit. The heart may continue to run as deeply 
in debt, the debt of sin and immorality, as it 
pleases, provided that, in the account of con- 
science, enough to balance it is passed to the 



56 

side of credit, the credit of ceremonial observan- 
ces. So that conscience, instead of discharging 
its proper office of monitor against sin, is per- 
verted to act the strange part of an advocate 
for superstition. It leaves immorality to stalk 
abroad without a blush, and wields all its power- 
ful influence to plead for useless and sinful 
ceremonies. 

What is begun by corrupted conscience is 
carried on by a corrupted priesthood. These 
very ceremonies, which the commission of sin 
alone induces men to perform, are an important 
source of income to the clergy. It is stoutly 
denied, indeed, that absolutions are made a 
matter of sale ; and I suppose they are not 
generally paid for directly ; though I have, with 
my own eyes, seen it done in the ecclesiastical 
capital of the Armenian church. Directly or 
indirectly, however, confession and other cere- 
monies occasion much money to be transferred 
from the pockets of the people to those of the 
priests. Has a man committed a sin for which 
he is condemned by his confessor to the penance 
of alms, for example ? His charity is most likely 
to go to some church or convent ; or, in other 
ways, to pass into the hands of the clergy, 
without their being required to render an ac- 
count of it. Is he directed to seek the benefit 



57 

of a special mass ? The priest is paid for 
saying it. And the price of masses is regularly 
fixed. Does he wish to escape an irksome 
penance ? An indulgence is procured, most 
likely by charity which flows directly into the 
treasury of the church. After all, does con- 
science convict him of guilt upon his death-bed 
to a degree that makes him afraid of purgatory ? 
He leaves a legacy to some church or convent 
to pay for masses for his soul. In a word, the 
vices and sins of men are a direct source of 
income to the clergy. For, so long as men 
believe that these ceremonies will cancel their 
sins, the more frequently they sin, the more 
frequently will they have these ceremonies per- 
formed for them ; and for these ceremonies, 
directly or indirectly, are the priests paid. In 
fact, a large part of their income is from per- 
quisites, of which these are a part. How then 
can they be expected to restrain wickedness, 
considering them as they are, selfish, unrenewed 
men ? It is true they paint in glowing colors 
the torments of hell ; but for what? As dis- 
suasives against sin ; rarely, very rarely, are they 
made to bear upon the conscience of the guilty 
sinner. Let a man swear, steal, lie, break wil- 
fully every commandment of the decalogue ; if he 
comes dutifully to the confessional, and does the 



58 

penance there laid upon him, he loses not his 
rights as a faithful son of the church, nor his 
title to salvation. But, though his moral char- 
acter be unimpeachable with a single fault, if he 
denies the efficacy of ceremonial rites, and dares 
go to God instead of his priest for pardon, he is 
thrust out of the church and beyond the reach 
of mercy. Let him be condemned by the laws 
of his country for murder, and he is accompanied 
to the scaffold by a long array of priestly coun- 
sellors, the last word he hears is from the lips of 
his confessor, and money is solicited at every 
door to pay for masses for his soul. Let him be 
condemned by the laws of his church for heresy, 
and he pines away in a dungeon comfortless and 
friendless till he sinks into the grave of oblivion, 
if not of death. 

I speak what I know, what I have seen. Not 
an instance has come to my knowledge where 
immorality has been the cause of excommunica- 
tion ; but more than one where the truly pious 
have been cast out for pretended heresy. And 
the allusion just made to the comparative treat- 
ment of a murderer and the so called heretic, is 
but a brief description of an execution at Malta, 
and the persecution of the lamented Asaad-esh- 
Shidiak. I have myself, in company with two 
other missionaries, been mobbed and stoned, by 



59 

an enraged papal populace, in attempting to give 
decent burial to a man whose crime was that he 
had refused to confess, upon his death-bed. 
Custom required that such a person should be 
buried like a beast in unconsecrated ground, 
without clerical aid ; a mode of burial that 
was dreaded by the people almost worse than 
death itself, and it was turned by the priests 
into a powerful argument to deter the people 
from forsaking their church. By infringing 
upon the custom, we were about to destroy their 
argument, and the rabble were stirred up to 
prevent it. 

Who can now be astonished at the universal 
prevalence of immorality 1 It could not be 
otherwise. A set of heartless ceremonies, which, 
instead of preventing sin, are fastened by it, 
have usurped the place and the name of re- 
ligion ; and the tie that connects morality with 
religion could not fail to be severed. It has 
been severed. A crew of Greek pirates were 
condemned and executed at Malta for robbery 
upon the high seas. It appeared at their trial 
that, in plundering a certain vessel, while they 
seized every vegetable article of food on board, 
a barrel of fish was left untouched. The court 
demanded the reason. The pirates replied, 
that, it being Lent when they robbed the vessel ^ 



60 

the use of fish was then prohibited by the Greek 
church ; and God forbid that they should be 
guilty of breaking their church's laws ! During 
a long course of piracy, their hands had not 
remained unstained with innocent blood, but 
they were too religious to eat fish in Lent. 

A bishop in Mount Lebanon met me one day, 
and it was the Sabbath too, in a state of sottish 
intoxication ; and besides, he had long been 
living in concubinage. But when I was at his 
house the next morning, it being the first day of 
Lent, he was too religious to break his fast before 
noon by tasting a cup of coffee with me, — The 
largest convent in Armenia is extensively re- 
puted in the nation for the unnamable immorali- 
ties of its monks. And yet pilgrims frequent it 
as a place so holy that the pilgrimage merits for 
them a large reward. And when there, I saw a 
number of women confessing to one of those 
very monks, and expecting from him an ab- 
solution that should cancel their sins. Is it 

too much to say of so corrupt a form of Chris- 
tianity, that it exerts no beneficial influence 
upon its professors ? 

Its beneficial influence upon those who are 
without, upon Mohammedans, in the midst of 
whom it exists, has also ceased. To what was 
the rise itself of Mohammedanism owing ? How 



61 

could that absurd and impure religion spring up 
and spread so extensively over regions where 
apostles had preached, martyrs bled, and Chris- 
tianity been so long professed 1 The salt had 
lost its savor. Christianity had ceased to exert 
its conservative influence ; and society was be- 
come a putrid fermenting mass, sending up a 
-cloud of all monstrous forms of error, like the 
smoke out of the bottomless pit; which in time 
bred and sent forth the abominable doctrines of 
the false prophet, like locusts unto whom was 
given the power of scorpions. And men being 
no longer armed with the sword of the Spirit, 
which is the word of God, nor defended by the 
shield of faith, were smitten and subdued. The 
Bible was neglected, true piety had become 
almost extinct, and only the dogmas of lordly 
bishops, and onerous external ceremonies, be- 
lieved and practiced by worldly and immoral 
professors, represented, or rather caricatured, 
the religion of Christ and his apostles. Then 
was there opportunity and room for a new re- 
ligion ; and bursting upon the world with all the 
vigor of youth, it easily trampled upon such 
miserable shadows of Christianity as it en- 
countered, and spread and triumphed. 

There is nothing mysterious in the rise and 
progress of Mohammedanism. Should infidelity 
6 



62 

or papacy banish piety and the Bible from our 
enlightened land, few generations would pass, 
before there would be found, even here, all the 
ingredients for as foul a religion as that of the 
Arabian prophet. Indeed it ought to be felt, 
and deeply felt by you all, that the whole ac- 
count I am giving, is but a picture of the destiny 
of our own beloved country, should the salt 
among us lose its savor. Let religion become a 
name and the Bible be forgotten here, and no 
better fate certainly can await the land of the 
pilgrims, than has befallen that of prophets and 
apostles. 

As corrupted Christianity had no power to 
check Mohammedanism at its rise, so it has had 
no tendency since to terminate it. Mohamme- 
dans have never been brought to compare them- 
selves with any body of Christians exemplary 
enough to make them at all ashamed of their 
own religion and character. Europeans in 
Turkey almost uniformly declare that the na- 
tive Christians are worse than the Turks. And 
I confess that observation has inclined me to the 
same opinion. Christianity has not retained 
enough of its heavenly character to make its 
professors any better than the followers of Mo- 
hammed. When, therefore, it is only from 
living exemplifications of it, that Mohammedans 



63 

obtain their ideas of Christianity, as is univer- 
sally the case, how can it have any salutary 
influence upon them? It must, on the contrary, 
draw upon itself their contempt, and confirm 
them in their errors. 

Such is actually its effect. The German 
missionaries at Shoosha, in the northeastern 
part of Armenia, had originally for their exclu- 
sive object, the conversion of Mohammedans. 
But they were met at the outset and on all occa- 
sions, by the confident assertion that the Bible 
was less excellent than the Koran, for its fol- 
lowers, the native Armenian Christians, were 
more demoralized than the Mohammedans. 
The fact they could not deny ; and in vain did 
they reply to the argument, that such was not 
the proper effect of the gospel ; for their oppo- 
nents had never seen any other effect. They 
were soon constrained to employ their principal 
energies in the reformation of the Armenians, 
as a necessary step to the conversion of v the 
Mohammedans. Similar is the experience of all 
missionaries in Turkey. In fact no seriously 
reflecting man can enter that empire without 
feeling, that bad specimens of Christianity, 
more than any thing else, keep Mohammedan- 
ism in countenance. — Where now is the salutary 



64 

influence of such a Christianity, upon its pro- 
fessors or upon others? It has ceased. The 
salt is good for nothing. 

It is also trodden under foot of men ; — for 
Christianity is, among Moslems, despised and 
oppressed, — The only condition, upon which 
the successors of Mohammed have ever tolerated 
Christians, is that of paying tribute as a subject,, 
servile race. With the Koran and the cimiter 
by their side, they have said, If you deny the 
one, you shall feel the other, or pay a handsome 
price for your heads. And to this day every 
Christian subject of Turkey, submits to the 
degrading capitation tax, in distinction from 
Mohammedans, to purchase clemency of his 
Moslem lords. Other taxes, also, are so unequally 
apportioned that Christians often bear the burden 
of them. 

The Christian is carefully divested too of 
every species of armor. While the Turk goes 
daily armed with pistols and yataghan, as a reg- 
ular part of his ordinary dress ; the Christian 
by his side must ever appear as defenceless as 
the lamb that is led to the slaughter. — Christians 
are disqualified, by their religion, for every office 
of power. Only in some of the lowest posts, to 



65 

Which they are admitted to perform the labor of 
business, do they sometimes acquire an influence 
that is felt. 

Even in his dress has the Christian ever been 
obliged carefully to distinguish himself from his 
masters. While the white, green, or red turban 
adorned the head of the Moslem, and gay colored 
cloths composed his splendid robes ; the Chris- 
tian marked his head by a brown or a black 
shawl, and his dress was of similar unassuming 
colors, under penalty of being chastised for 
arrogance. Until the recent changes in costume, 
you could hardly travel in any part of Turkey, 
without distinguishing, by his dress, the religion 
of almost every person you might meet. In 
many places, Christians were not allowed to 
ride on horseback ; they must go on foot, or 
take an humbler seat on a mule or an ass. 

You may ask, Are not these degrading dis- 
tinctions imposed upon Christians as conquered 
nations, rather than as professors of a despised 
religion ? I answer, the Arabs of Syria and 
Egypt are as much a conquered nation under 
the Turks, as any Christian sect. Yet those of 
them who profess Mohammedanism, are not 
liable to one of these distinctions ; while those 
of them who do not, are liable to them all. 

Europeans even are made to feel them in part. 
6 * 



66 

The Turk as uniformly scorns to be their ser- 
vant as he does to serve the native Christians^ 
and rarely do they receive from him an occa- 
sional act of menial service. Some customary 
civilities are carefully refused. The scriptural 
and oriental custom of rising up before the 
hoary head and the honorable man, is almost 
religiously observed by Moslems toward each 
other ; but never does a Christian, native or 
foreign, except in consequence of recent innova- 
tions, receive from a Turk such a mark of 
respect. — An English acquaintance was passing 
on horseback, a few years ago, by the house of 
a Turk, in a city of Asia Minor, not much fre- 
quented by Europeans. The Turk arrested 
him, and presenting a pistol to his breast, 
ordered him to dismount, declaring that no in- 
fidel should ride by his door. He was imprisoned 
for the outrage ; but a general burst of popular 
indignation that a Moslem should suffer for 
abusing a Christian, soon obliged the governor 
to release him, and to advise the Englishman, 
although he was his physician, to leave the city.. 
Until the capture of Damascus by the Egyptians, 
the European who should enter that city in a 
white turban, or on horseback, would be liable 
to be mobbed. In his own European dress, he 
could not enter it at all. One of the causes of 



67 

the recent rebellion of that city against the 
sultan, was his having given permission to an 
English consul to reside there in his native dress. 

The inexperienced foreigner may interpret 
such conduct as a personal insult, or as an ex- 
pression of national prejudice, or he may smile 
at it as the workings of clownish ill-breeding. 
But it is neither. It is a religious antipathy, a 
contempt for the religion of Jesus, formed into 
an integral part of national feeling, and ex- 
pressing itself as a part of a nation's manners.- — 
It is extended even to our sacred books. The 
Bible is treated as too corrupt to be valued or 
read. A German missionary attempted, under 
the protection of the Russian army, during its 
late invasion of Turkey, to effect an open and 
extensive sale of the Scriptures to the Turks in 
Turkish Armenia. He sold only fifteen copies, 
and gave away twenty-five. And even of these 
he heard of eight being torn in pieces. — Need I 
say more to show you the contempt and oppression 
under which Christianity groans ? It is emphati- 
cally cast out, and trodden under foot of men. 

How forcible now does the language of the 
text appear ? Could our Saviour have more 
aptly described the present nature, influence, 
and condition of Christianity in the East ? 
The passage stands a striking monument of his 



68 

discernment, and prophetic knowledge. The 
salt, having lost its savor, is good for nothing, 
and is cast out and trodden under foot of men. 

I shall conclude by asking, wherewith shall it 
be salted ? How can such systems of error he 
undermined and true religion revived 1 

Such a change is not impracticable. Could the 
truth, in no way, be made to reach the hearts of 
men, we might well despair. For through the^ 
truth does the Spirit operate. But we have nc 
such cause for discouragement. — In the Turkish 
empire the truth may be promulgated, probably 
far more extensively than you are aware. At 
every point may missionaries enter it, and labor 
among the Christian population, with no Turk- 
ish ruler disposed to hinder, or make them afraid 
in so doing. Moslems, when not instigated by 
others to oppose, look with indifference upon 
our operations among their Christian subjects. 
Direct labors for their own conversion they 
would oppose. For their law inflicts upon 
whomsoever apostatizes from Mohammedanism, 
the penalty of death without mercy ; and the 
attempt to proselyte Mohammedans to Chris- 
tianity is naturally regarded as a high offence. 
We have therefore hitherto confined our direct 
operations to the nominally Christian population. 

Nor in so doing, do we depart in the least 



69 

from proper missionary work. They are as 
completely out of the way of salvation, and need 
as much to be directed to it, as the Moslems or 
the heathen. You may speculate about their 
doing as well as they know how, being sincere, 
and the like. But go among them and you 
would soon be convinced, that I should be 
nearer the truth in saying, they do as badly as 
they know how ; and are well aware too that it 
is wrong. I have found them neither ignorant, 
nor unwilling to confess, that in many things 
they offend God. Sincere they are indeed ; but 
in what? In believing that their daily conduct 
is right? Far from it. They know that it is 
wrong. Nor do I believe that the followers of 
any false religion in the world are sincere in 
this respect. They are sincere in believing that 
their superstitious rites and ceremonies will can- 
cel their sins. But can such sincerity save 
thenr? Directly the reverse. It is the very 
thing that encourages them to indulge in sin. 
It leads them blindfold to destruction. — Nor, 
were the effect of our labors to be limited to 
their conversion, would the object, on account of 
their numbers, be unworthy of our greatest ef- 
forts. For they probably amount, in Turkey, to 
nearly a third of the population of the whole 
United States. 



70 

To this large body of nominal Christians, the 
Turkish government is not disposed to prevent 
our communicating the truths of the gospel. 
Nor, in general, is any other effectual hindrance 
offered. From papists, indeed, wherever we en- 
counter them, opposition is always to be ex- 
pected. They have caused all that we have 
experienced. In some cases, they have been 
able, by bribery and other means, to bring down 
upon us the persecuting arm of Mohammedan 
power. In others, ecclesiastical authority only 
drives away from us the members of the Romish 
church. But often, they are in no way effectu- 
ally prevented from hearing the truth at our lips. 
And altogether, they form but a very small 
minority of the native Christian population of 
Turkey ; amounting probably to less than three 
hundred thousand. — From the Greeks, Armeni- 
ans, and their Oriental brethren, who form the 
great majority, we encounter no such opposition. 
They, wherever the experiment has been tried 
in Turkey, unless under papal influence, allow 
us to instruct and enlighten them, by schools, 
by circulating the Bible and tracts, by religious 
conversation, and expounding the Scriptures. 
And is a revival of pure religion impracticable^ 
where such powerful means of conveying truth 
to the heart can be used ? 



71 

In liberated Greece, too, it is far from im- 
practicable. Of the disposition of the present 
government I can say nothing ; it has been so 
recently established. Its former government 
never excluded missionaries, nor interfered with 
schools that were exclusively missionary. Our 
books it admitted free of duty, on the ground 
that they were benefactions to the nation. Of 
the disposition of the people I can speak, from 
personal observation in most parts of the coun- 
try. And I assure you that the idea of ex- 
cluding us from among them is the farthest from 
their thoughts. The Bible they never refuse to 
accept. Schools are the delight of the nation, 
and they are glad to receive them from us, with 
school-books as religious as we choose to make 
them. I have seen the eyes of the meanest 
peasant brighten at the mention of them. I 
have been asked by a priest for the name of our 
society, that it might be mentioned in the daily 
prayers of a school. And I have been welcomed 
by the children of a whole town, shouting at the 
prospect of receiving some books. In a word, 
until government ceases to speak the feelings of 
the people, or those feelings change, will every 
harbor, and inlet, and creek of the indented 
shores of Greece and its islands, be an open 
door for missionaries to bring in religious knciwj* 



72 

edge, by means of schools, books, and con* 
versational preaching. 

Turn now a moment to Persia. Does any 
thing prevent the practicability of introducing 
the gospel into that realm, as the means of re- 
viving pure religion ? The governor of the 
province where most of the native Christians 
reside, is Abbas Mirza, the heir apparent to the 
throne, who has long favored the introduction 
of European improvements into his country. 
That he would not only not oppose, but would 
decidedly patronize missionary labors among 
that class of his subjects, I have the unanimous 
testimony of the members of the English embassy 
in Persia, in addition to my own distinct im- 
pressions. Those Christians themselves, too, 
in all our intercourse with them, as protestant 
ministers of the gospel, manifested no prejudice 
against us. Most of them are Nestorians ; and 
they gave us a more fraternal reception than I 
have ever met with from any of their brethren. 
In fact, the entire absence of auricular confes- 
sion, by which the other ancient churches are 
hedged around with the inhospitable walls of 
close communion, makes them free to receive to 
their bosom as brethren all who bear the name 
of Christ. — Nor are we obliged to pass by en- 
tirely the Moslems, who form the mass of the 



73 

population of Persia. With none of the haughty, 
forbidding reserve of the Turks, the learned 
Persians are always disposed for religious con- 
versation and argument. Instead of despising 
the Bible too as unworthy of a perusal, they pro- 
fess respect for it, and no prejudice is manifested 
to its being circulated and read. I have seen it 
and the Koran, side by side, for sale in a Persian 
Mohammedan's bookstore. What now makes 
the revival of pure religion in Persia impracti- 
cable 1 There lies indeed between it and 
Europe, an inhospitable tract of country difficult 
to be passed. But shall that be an insurmount- 
able barrier to Christian benevolence, which 
English travellers annually pass for wealth, for 
honor, or for curiosity? Let every Christian 
blush for the weakness of his love to souls that 
will not answer, No ! 

Neither in the Turkish empire, nor in Greece, 
nor in Persia, therefore, is the revival of pure 
religion impracticable ; for in them all can 
missionaries reside, and travel, and by various 
means enforce the truth upon the hearts of the 
native Christian population, at least. 

There is, further, positive encouragement to 
expect such a revival. In showing you that the 
means of grace can have access so extensively 
7 



74 

to the hearts of men, I have not proved a trifle. 
I have removed every scriptural ground of dis- 
couragement. I have brought all God's precious 
promises of a blessing upon the preaching of 
his word, to bear directly upon that field of 
missions. I have laid a foundation for true 
Christian faith. And is not faith in the promise 
of God sufficient encouragement ? Is it not the 
encouragement of all evangelical ministers of 
the gospel ? Who without it would ever preach 1 
Who with it would ever cease to preach ? The 
preacher can, in no circumstances, change the 
heart. It is his to use the means, and look to 
God by faith to give them efficacy. And wher- 
ever the means can be used, there there is ground 
for the exercise of faith. 

I know of but one circumstance that can 
clear the Christian from the heavy charge of 
unbelief, in being discouraged from attempting 
the conversion of men in any part of the earth. 
It is the impossibility, from whatever circum- 
stance, of bringing the means of grace to bear 
upon the mind. It was only from those cities 
that would not receive nor hear them, that the 
twelve were authorized to depart, shaking off 
the dust of their feet against them. Jonah was 
no more excusable for being discouraged from 
publishing the word of the Lord at Nineveh, 



75 

than if he had been ordered to preach it at Je- 
rusalem. Oh ! how many Jonahs have there 
been in the church, shrinking, through want of 
benevolence and faith, from that boldness, which 
would long ere this have carried her triumphant 
over every false religion to the final consumma- 
tion of her glory ! Groaning under God's curse 
upon them, how often has she been tossed upon 
the billows of war and persecution, or, what is 
not a less hindrance to her progress, been made 
to lie still and decay in the dead calm of un- 
evangelical formality. The remnants of her 
wreck are scattered through the Mohammedan 
empires, and her motionless frame lies rotting 
upon Christian Europe. May no faithless Jo- 
nahs bring curses like these upon our Ameri- 
can Zion ! Shrink not from your duty to the 
world, my brethren, and she will ride safely into 
the haven of millennial rest. 

Such I believe to be the proper ground of en- 
couragement respecting missions ; faith in God in 
view of the use of means. At any rate, I freely 
confess that it is mine, in theory, and I trust also 
in feeling and practice. Supported by it, I have 
already cheerfully endured some perils and trials, 
in foreign climes, and among barbarous people. 
And moved by it, do I expect again to bid a 
final farewell to country and friends. If I am 



76 

mistaken, the mistake is not a small one. Coiv 
rect it ; and I should cease to be a missionary. 
Nay, more, I should cease to be a minister of 
the gospel. — I do not expect that all will enter 
into these views ; for all men have not faith. I 
present them to Christians ■ by them, they will 
be rightly estimated. By the world, I expect to 
be called visionary and unwise ; for I know that 
I cross its first maxims of wisdom. But if I am, 
then was also Paul. Did he in those s#me re- 
gions undertake a less arduous work ? Did he 
look any where else for encouragement and 
success ? He, also, was pronounced beside 
himself; but it was by a heathen Festus. Far, 
far be it for me to arrogate to myself the charac- 
ter of Paul. Had I it, however, I should be 
unspeakably more liable than now, to be 
charged by the world with being visionary and 
unwise. 

Receive not the impression that there is 
nothing else encouraging in the field we have 
reviewed. The results already witnessed there, 
afford a cheering prospect of success. The 
mode of operation has indeed been peculiar ; and 
so is also, as might be expected, the effect pro- 
duced. Perhaps in no other field has so large a 
part of the labor of missionaries been itinerant. 
While numbers, with the Bible and religious 



77 

books in their hands, have traversed Egypt, 
Palestine, Syria, Greece, and parts of Asia 
Minor ; only a few have fixed themselves in per- 
manent stations, to concentrate their influence 
within limited spheres. The impression of such 
labors is necessarily extended at the expense of 
its depth ; but still may be as great and impor- 
tant, as if it were more limited and deeper. 
You must indeed expect fewer individual con- 
versions at the outset ; but the way is preparing 
for a more general harvest in the end. And 
which is the most desirable ? Thoroughly to 
enlighten a limited number of individuals here 
and there, and form them into separate churches ; 
while their countrymen remain so unenlightened 
as to regard them, to the destruction of all their 
influence, as heathen men and publicans ? Or 
to diffuse the light so generally, that all can see 
something of it, and ultimately come forward 
together, to reform long established abuses ? 

That light has been thus diffused and is 
gradually working its effect, I feel authorized 
to give you the most positive assurance ; having 
had opportunity to compare different countries 
and nations, where missionaries have, and where 
they have not been. The contrast has been 
striking, as I have gone around from the excited 

thought and feeling of Syria, springing up at 

7 * 



78 

the death of Fisk, and holding out promising 
indications of an approaching reformation J 
through regions where fewer labors have in* 
troduced a smaller number of new religious 
ideas ; to the dead apathy and midnight ig- 
norance of the greater part of Armenia, where 
no missionary had ever trod. — Individual con- 
verts, also, have not been wanting. I have 
found a number in various places. In the 
families of two of them in Syria, I spent several 
months, in the most gratifying Christian com- 
munion : and I reckon them among the pleasant- 
est months of my life. In fact, hardly a station 
has been occupied for any length of time without 
numbering some converts. And as we begin to 
act more upon the plan of fixed stations, such 
results may be expected to multiply. 

Nor are we, by any means, to limit our ex- 
pectations to the conversion of the native Chris- 
tians. They are indeed, themselves, worthy 
objects of our labors, on account of their perish- 
ing condition and their considerable numbers. 
But our ultimate and chief design is beyond 
them. We are laying the axe at the foot of 
Mohammedanism. I have showed you that the 
missionaries at Shoosha, even under the Russian 
government, where hindrances to operations 
among Christians are many, and among Mo- 



79 

hammedans few, found it necessary to aim at re- 
forming the native Christians, as a preparatory 
step by which to get access to the judgment and 
hearts of Moslems. In pursuing a similar course 
in Turkey, also, where we are forced to it by 
the laws, we feel that we are taking somewhat 
distant indeed, but the most certain steps for the 
conversion of the Mohammedans there. Reform 
the ungodly lives of native Christians, and the 
main support of Mohammedanism is gone ; it 
must fall. Instead of leaving it, as now, to 
grow rankly in the shade of corrupt Christianity, 
place it in the meridian splendor of the religion 
of the Bible, shining out in the holy lives of its 
professors, and it will wither and die. Let it 
once compare its hideous form with the sym- 
metrical beauty of true piety, and it must forever 
hide its face for shame. Indeed why has Provi- 
dence perpetuated, in sects oppressed by Mo- 
hammedans, an attachment to the forms of 
religion so long after they have lost its power, 
except that through them, as a door, the truth 
may enter the formidable barriers in which 
Mohammedanism has entrenched itself, and 
attack it in its citadel ? 

Finally ; this revival of religion must be ef- 
fected by foreign aid. The salt has there lost 
its savor : it cannot salt itself. All is dead and 



80 

stagnant. Men there know not their wants 
enough to supply them. They are not sensible 
enough of their danger to seek for safety. Left 
to themselves, generation will continue to crowd 
generation into the bottomless pit. A hand 
from abroad must arrest them. Others must 
point out to them their danger and how to 
escape it ; must inform them of their wants and 
how to supply them. And upon whom does this 
duty devolve, if not upon American Christians, 
of whom we, my brethren, form a part ? We 
must gird ourselves for the work. 

Do you say, it is arduous '? How, I ask, 
could we expect it to be otherwise ? There is 
the seat of the beast and of the false prophet, 
the most formidable enemies of our Redeemer's 
kingdom. We go to attack them in their cita- 
del. There is to be fought the great battle, that 
will crown the Lamb with final triumph. We 
go to engage in the warfare. Where else may 
we expect such deadly encounters; where so 
hard and long a contest ? But the victory is as 
sure as eternal truth and omnipotence can make 
it ; and glorious enough to cheer away all our 
pains and fatigues. 

My brethren, we talk about the millennium ; 
but before it comes, much hard labor must be 
done ; and it must all be done by dint of effort 



81 

too. No indolent, inactive Christians will bring 
about that glorious day. Why not then be up 
and doing? The world will grow no better 
while we are waiting. The progress of man 
without the guidance of divine truth is down- 
ward. A hundred years hence, after three gene- 
rations shall have gone into a miserable eternity, 
the same work, or a more difficult oiie, will re- 
main to be done. Then faith in God only will 
give courage to attempt it ; and that encourage- 
ment we may have as fully now. It is as much 
our duty, as it will be that of the generations who 
may come after us. And we have, or may have 
probably, just as many facilities as they will 
have. 

I need make no apology for my earnestness. 
I represent to-day the brethren whom you and 
the sister churches of our land have sent, not 
only into the regions where I have been, but 
into other parts of the world, as missionaries to 
the heathen ; not indeed to plead for their per- 
sonal interests, but to plead, in their stead, for 
perishing souls around them. They send back 
to you the cry, " Come over and help us." 
Suffer us not to stand alone in this wide-spread 
moral desolation. Around us, on every side, 
are vast fields of ruins, sad traces of the ravaging 
march of sin. We look to this and that ac- 



82 

quaintance, to this and that neighborhood, or 
town, or city, for one that loves God and keeps 
his commandments. But we find none. We 
tell you plainly and with sorrowful hearts, they 
'are all in the broad road, and obstinately bent 
upon pursuing it too. But we are not dis- 
couraged. Though the bones throughout this 
vast valley are all very dry, we believe they can 
live. For we can prophesy upon them. We 
can go among them all and say, " O ye dry 
bones, hear the word of the Lord." And we 
can pray too, " Come from the four winds, O 
breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they 
may live." Indeed, here and there we begin to 
hear a noise and a shaking ; bone comes to his 
bone, the breath comes into them, and they live, 
In this attitude, we call upon you, brethren, 
for help. Multiply our numbers, increase our 
means, pray for us. 

Of the people indeed, for whom, as the repre- 
sentative of my missionary brethren, I thus 
plead, few, alas ! feel their wants so as formally 
to express them. But does not their condition 
plead louder than language ? Its call is like 
that which brought our Saviour from heaven to 
earth. His advent was not solicited by men, 
nor did they welcome his presence among them. 
Their perishing condition was the call that 



83 

reached his heart. Such a call comes to you 
from all the unevangelized world. In present- 
ing it, a sense of responsibility overwhelms me. 
I am acting as advocate for millions and millions 
of perishing souls. How shall I plead their 
cause so as to secure their rescue? I am ad- 
dressing those whose obligations are the most 
sacred to send to their relief. How shall I 
prevail upon you so that their blood shall not be 
required at your hands 1 

I must let their perishing condition speak. I 
have presented it to you, so far as I have ob- 
served it, as honestly and fairly as I know how. 
That I have, however, exhibited to your minds 
but the faint outlines of the picture, which, as it 
is impressed upon my own, is so filled up and 
glows with the coloring of real fact, I am well 
aware. The plan of my discourse has led me 
to explain the source and theory of some of the 
forms of moral depravity with which I have been 
conversant, rather than to describe them in all 
the detail of their specific workings. Could I 
now by a narrative of my journeys and labors, 
take you around in imagination from city to 
city, from house to house, from man to man, 
and transfer one by one to your minds all the 
dark shades of wickedness, which observation 
has so indelibly imprinted upon my own; or 



84 

could you have been with me in person, and 
gone through the process of receiving every dis- 
tinct impression by painful experience ; surely 
you could not remain indifferent. Your hearts 
would bleed, and you would cry out, " whom 
shall we send, and who will go for us" to preach 
the gospel to such wretched men ? 



SERMON II. 



DUTY OF CHRISTIANS TO LIVE FOR THE CON- 
VERSION OF THE WORLD. 



Romans xii. 1. 

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that 
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 
unto God, which is your reasonable service. 

The language of this passage is language of 
earnest entreaty. The deep emotion which 
dictated it, may be found expressed in the close 
of the preceding chapter. The writer, in a 
prophetic vision of God's mysterious ways of 
mercy to Jews and Gentiles, had there ex- 
claimed, " O the depth of the riches both of the 
wisdom and knowledge of God ! how unsearch- 
able are his judgments, and his ways past find- 
ing out ! For who hath known the mind of the 
Lord ? or who hath been his counsellor ? or who 
8 



hath given unto him and it shall be recompensed 
unto him again ? For of him, and through him, 
and to him, are all things." Continuing to glow 
with the same ardor, but directing his vision to 
the persons he was addressing, he calls them to 
their duty, in the text, in terms of solemn ad- 
juration. His earnestness demands our atten- 
tion. In giving it for a while, let us look, 

1. At what he requires us to do. 

2. The reasonableness of the requirement. 
And, 

3. Our obligations to comply with it. 

1. We are required to give our bodies a living 
sacrifice to God. Sacrifices are presents to 
God. They were offered by the Jews as thank- 
offerings , to express gratitude for favors received ; 
as peace-offerings , to appease the wrath of an in- 
censed Jod ; or, in a greater number of instances, 
as sin-offerings, in which an animal, presented by 
a guilty offender as a symbolical substitute for 
himself, was slain, to signify that the wrath of 
God was poured out upon it, instead of the real 
transgressor, and was thus appeased. In the 
last sense it was, that " Christ was once offered 
to bear the sins of many," and "put away sin by 
the sacrifice of himself." In the first sense we 
are required to present our bodies a living sacri- 



87 

fice to God ; thus, by the greatest gift we can 
make, to express our gratitude for all his good- 
ness and mercy. 

We are required to present our bodies a living 
sacrifice. The word soul, in innumerable in- 
stances in the Bible, is put for the whole person. 
In the passage, for example, " when thou shalt 
make his soul an offering for sin," it is equiva- 
lent to Mm, or himself. So, I think, in our 
text, body is put for the whole man. It is as if 
the writer had said, " that you present your- 
selves a living sacrifice. " But the choice of the 
word body here, appears to be emphatic. It is 
not the soul merely, to be absorbed in abstract 
contemplation, or communion with God, that is 
required ; but the body also, in active, every-day 
service. By the various organs and members of 
the body, are all our actions performed. To 
give our bodies to God, therefore, is to devote all 
our actions to him. Or, as the apostle elsewhere 
expresses it, " whether we eat or drink, or what- 
ever we do, to do all to the glory of God." 

But mere external service is nothing. The 
heart must be in it. Here also our text leaves 
no room for mistake. It requires us to present 
our bodies a living sacrifice. To give the body 
only, would be a dead sacrifice. We must give 



to God the soul also, which animates it, and 
makes it " living." 

In a word, the requirement of the text is, that 
we devote ourselves entirely to the active service 
of God. A compliance with this requirement 
implies a state of heart the opposite of that 
which we have by nature. By nature we love 
self supremely, and serve ourselves with all the 
heart. This selfishness must be renounced, 
must be trampled upon, would we give ourselves 
a living sacrifice to God. Self, from being so 
unduly exalted, must sink to its proper place, a 
reptile in the dust before the throne of infinite 
Majesty. That throne, no longer vainly looked 
down upon, must be suffered to stand up to view 
in all the grandeur of its justice, and the beauty 
of its benevolence. And, estimating thus in 
their due proportion the claims of God upon us, 
we must break away from the service of self, 
and enter his service as our future chief employ. 

But it is not now my design to urge upon the 
impenitent the duty of giving their hearts to 
God. I would rathe/ say something that shall 
be profitable to Christians. I would urge the 
requirement of the text in its application to those 
who have already surrendered their hearts. 

Do you ask, Can this be necessary 1 Will 



89 

not a full compliance with this requirement 
follow of course from the surrender of the heart ? 
The question is a natural one; and to a mere 
theorist might seem to dictate its pwn answer. 
But scan the actual conduct of many, alas! very 
many, Christians, and say wherein they give 
themselves a sacrifice to God. I speak not of 
their attendance at religious meetings, or of 
their sitting at the communion table, nor of any 
other special religious acts ; but of the tendency 
and aim of their customary pursuits, which, 
after all, take up the greater part of their time 
and attention, and of course go to form more 
prominent and substantial parts of their real 
character and influence than mere religious 
duties. 

Some there are, and it is cheering to know 
the number is increasing, whose whole course 
of daily conduct is a course of devoted ac- 
tivity in the service of God. And something 
may be found in the conduct of most professing 
Christians, as a proof that they obey, in part at 
least, a master which the world acknowledges 
not. But in how many is it little more than a 
negative obedience that they yield ? An ab- 
staining, simply, from things in which the world 
indulge ? Where is that hastening onward in a 
steady course of active labor for God, which 
8* 



90 

shows the moving power of a heart swelling 
with devotion to his service ? 

The work of conversion seems to have been 
arrested, and left incomplete. The heart may 
have been savingly affected, but the actions 
have not yet been consecrated. The body has 
not been given a living sacrifice to God. At 
the fountain something of a change may have 
taken place ; but in the streams which issue 
from it, the change hardly appears. Of the 
affections a few only seem to have received a 
new direction, while the rest continue to flow 
on in their former channels ; and the man 
is still moved along by them in the same ac- 
customed courses of worldliness which he has 
ever pursued. 

What, for example, are some of the principal 
aims at which are directed the pursuits of the 
men of the world ? To provide a sustenance 
for themselves and their families, securing to 
them what they shall eat, and what they shall 
drink, and wherewithal they shall be clothed, 
both now and in after life, is the chief business 
and aim of a vast multitude. The aim of num* 
bers more is to secure such a property, and so to 
deport themselves in their manners, dress and 
equipage, as to move respectably in the circle 
in which birth or ambition has placed them. 



91 

Numbers still aim all their energies at the ac- 
quisition of riches for riches' sake. 

Wherein now, in these respects, not to speak 
of the higher aspirings of ambition, or of the 
lower grovellings of sensuality, do a numerous 
class of Christians make themselves to differ 
from the men of the world ? Follow some from 
Monday morning to Saturday night, and what 
do they apparently labor for and think of, but to 
secure to themselves honestly a competence of 
the good things of this world, and to lay up 
something for their children ? Scrutinize others 
as closely, and you will find their grasp after the 
things of the world equally constant, that they 
may meet the varied factitious wants of the 
higher circle in which they move ; their minds 
being additionally occupied about the etiquette 
and ceremony of life, so that it may be said of 
them, as it was of Martha, that they are cum- 
bered about much serving. Others still there 
are, who, though the apostle has said that such 
shall fall into temptation, and a snare, and into 
many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men 
in destruction and perdition, will notwithstand- 
ing be rich. I say not but they are all affection- 
ate friends, good neighbors, and honest dealers. 
I simply ask what do they more than others ? 
Do not eyen the unregenerate so ? 



92 

Have I described the manner of life of any 
who hear me 1 To such my discourse is di- 
rected. I would say to them, Be no longer half 
Christians. Suffer your religion no longer to lie 
dormant, and yourselves to continue on in the 
beaten paths of worldliness, where you learned 
to walk in the days of your alienation. Carry 
your religion into the business of life, allowing it 
to give a new direction to all the branches of 
your conduct, and pursuits. In doing so you 
will comply with the requirement of the text ; 
for you will devote yourselves wholly to the 
active service of God. 

And what, more specifically, shall be the new 
direction of your pursuits ? What the great ob- 
ject of life, if it be spent in the service of God 1 
It must be to do the will of God. And what is 
his will ? What do we gather from the whole 
tenor of the Bible to be the one great wish of 
his heart, at least in reference to our revolted 
province of his dominions 1 For what were our 
first parents spared the full infliction of the 
punishment of apostacy, receiving the cheering 
promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise 
the serpent's head 1 For what did that seed, so 
long foretold in types and shadows, at length 
appear and give himself up to death ? For what 
was his last most solemn charge given, to preach 



93 

the gospel to every creature ? For what has he 
so long continued his religion in the world, 
adding success to every faithful effort for its 
advancement ? It is, that he may bring back 
the world to its rightful allegiance to its Maker, 
— that all men may be saved and come to the 
knowledge of the truth. For this has God 
spared the world since its first rebellion. For this 
did the Saviour empty himself of his glories, and 
bear our sins on the cross. For this is he ex- 
alted to be head over all things at the right hand 
of the Father, wielding the destinies of the uni- 
verse to subserve his object. In giving our- 
selves a sacrifice to God, therefore, in such a 
sense as to enter actively into his service, we 
know at what to aim. The great object of our 
life must be that at which he aims. We must 
live for the conversion of the world. Such was 
the object of the Saviour, and " if any man have 
not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his." 

Think not that I am about to exhort you all 
to become actually missionaries. That you 
should, is not requisite, in order that you may 
live for the conversion of the world. You can 
do it, continuing still to occupy all the variety of 
stations which God in his providence has al- 
lotted you. Among the souls to be saved are 
your own. And each one in securing his own 



94 

salvation, does so much towards the conversion 
of the world. He adds one to the number of 
such as are saved. But he adds only one. So 
exalted, it is true, are our individual interests in 
our own estimation, that it is difficult to look 
upon ourselves in the humbling attitude of a 
simple unit, of no more value than any other 
unit, in the unnumbered millions of God's re- 
volted subjects ; and to feel that in returning 
ourselves alone to his allegiance, we accomplish 
hardly a noticeable mite of his will. But the 
nearer we come to this estimate, the nearer are 
we to the view which God himself takes of 
us. To ourselves, indeed, our own souls are 
worth the whole world. But is not the en- 
tire population of the earth made up of souls, 
each one equally dear to itself, and all placed in 
an even balance by their Creator ? He that 
leaves the world, having saved himself merely, 
has done exceedingly little. This little I may 
not stop now to exhort you to do. I suppose 
myself to be addressing Christians, who are 
already attending to this. 

My exhortation is, " Let your light so shine 
before men that others may see your good works 
and glorify your Father which is in heaven." 
This you can do by personal religious inter- 
course, whether in private, in the Sabbath 



95 

school, or in the meeting for conference and 
prayer. He that thus converts one sinner in 
addition to himself doubles his effectiveness in 
the great work of converting the world. He 
may go on to triple, quadruple, and multiply it 
indefinitely. 

Your influence for the conversion of the world 
may take other channels, also, than that of per- 
sonal intercourse. Your property may convey 
it to the souls of men. By property, may he 
who has it multiply himself in this good work. 
He may have his substitutes and agents, and he 
may place them any where. The benevolent 
societies of our day have provided channels 
through which, in the form of tracts, Bibles, and 
missionaries, the private Christian can employ 
his property to reach the souls of men, in the 
waste places of our own Zion at home, through 
the great valley of the West, and among the 
widely scattered unevangelized nations. 

It is a peculiar feature of the present day that 
the remotest parts of the earth are brought near 
to us. All the world are virtually neighbors to 
every private Christian. Inasmuch as he can 
by the simplest process exert an influence and 
make himself felt in the remotest heathen tribes. 
Nor need he have much at his disposal in order 
to effect something. The widow's mite will 



96 

6ount. In former times, did now and then a 
Christian shed a tear over the nations sitting in 
darkness ; it was all in vain, and he left them to 
grope onward, for no benevolent societies then 
opened to him a way by which he could reach 
them. Now, who can complain that any part of 
the earth is beyond his reach ? While laboring 
on his farm, at his trade, or in his profession, 
may the commonest Christian, by means of a 
Bible, or a tract, put info the hands of a mis- 
sionary at his expense, or by means of the words 
of a missionary himself sent forth by his aid, be 
conveying the light of salvation to the darkest 
heathen's heart in the most benighted corner of 
the earth. 

Here also appears the foundation for another 
form of influence the Christian may exert, the 
influence of prayer. Where means are used, 
there can prayer be answered. Your petitions 
offered up here, may be answered in the con- 
version of souls in the farthest isles of the sea. 

Such are some of the ways in which, in de- 
voting yourselves to the service of God, your 
aims are to be directed to the conversion of the 
world. And allow me to say that none of them 
are foreign to the sphere of the obscurest Chris- 
tian. Not one has been mentioned peculiar to 
the missionary, or to the minister of the gospeL 



97 

Of all them, the use of property is the one most 
appropriate to the tenor of my discourse. This 
indeed is what is specially intended by the ex- 
hortation to give your bodies a living sacrifice to 
God. It is intended that where you labor and 
earn money, you should labor and earn money, 
not for yourselves, but for God, to be expended, 
so far as practicable, for the conversion of the 
world. This is much more than to give to him 
your Sabbaths, or special religious acts, or now 
and then a particular benevolent effort, or a 
direct exertion for the conversion of sinners. 

The great, every-day, absorbing business of 
men, is with property. Let this property and its 
avails be held devoted to God and at his dis- 
posal, then will all their actions be indeed given 
to him. The idea of such a change in the aim 
of the labors and business of the world, almost 
reconciles one to its present distracting bustle 
and all-engrossing cares. One is almost ready 
to imagine that God has suffered it to go on ac- 
quiring its present giddy impetus in the ac- 
quisition of property, that he may by and by 
change its direction, and bring all its force to 
bear upon the advancement of his kingdom. 
When this takes place, every Christian, as he 
goes forth to his daily business, will feel that he 
is laboring for God. The conversion of the 
9 



98 

world too he will look upon as a work, in which 
not missionaries only but himself also has a real 
concern. He will regard it as his own personal 
business, in the success of which he is to rejoice, 
and for the failures of which he is responsible. 
When such come to be the feelings and conduct 
of men, the millennium may be considered nigh, 
even at the door. But while devotion to self and 
the world prevails even in the hearts of Chris* 
tians, when can we expect its approach ? 

2. The requirement of such a sacrifice of our*- 
selves to God is reasonable. " Which is/ 5 says 
the apostle, u your reasonable service." 

It is reasonable, for it interferes with no real 
duties to ourselves or families. Does the labor- 
ing man, or the possessor of only a moderate 
property, say that all his strength and time are 
required to make provision for himself and those 
whom God has placed in dependence upon him T 
To make such a provision is certainly his duty. 
But allow me to say to such, Are you sure that 
your estimate of what is a necessary provision 
for either your present or your future wants, is 
not too high, when it is such as to require you 
to be exclusively devoted to it ? If you viewed 
aright the relations in which God has placed you 
to a perishing world, and gave to its claims upon 



99 

your labors and energies, their proportionate 
weight, by the side of the claims of yourselves 
or your families*; think you that you would not 
soon curtail some habitual or occasional expense, 
incurred for your own indulgence, or to gratify 
the folly or pride of a child ; or that you would 
not, confiding more implicitly in him who has 
said " take no thought for the morrow/' consider 
a smaller inheritance a sufficient provision for 
your children ; and thus leave room for the con- 
version of the world to come in for a share, as 
an object of your labors ? Would not its share 
become in fact so proportionately great, that it 
might be said you were wholly devoted to it 1 
He must indeed have a very contracted and 
mean view of life, who thinks that he was 
placed here to look out for self alone ; when 
God has surrounded him with such infinitely 
more noble objects for his labors and cares. 

Perhaps the man more respectable in rank, 
and of a superior property, may say, that for the 
sake of his reputation and influence in the circle 
where he moves, he is obliged to expend so 
much upon dress, equipage and style of living, 
that to obtain the necessary resources requires 
all his time and energies. To such I would 
say, To lose your reputation and influence can 
never be your duty. For they are among the 



100 

most valuable talents you can contribute to the 
great work of converting the world ; and in im- 
proving them for this object, you are complying 
with the requirement of the text. But are you 
sure that this is the object for which you im- 
prove them ? If so, we shall never expect to 
; see you take the lead in expensiveness of life. 
Instead of leading it onward, you will hang upon 
its wheels. If the style of the circle in which 
you are placed, is so costly as thus to interfere 
with more sacred duties, your business in re- 
taining an influence in it, is to reduce its 
standard of extravagance. This you will effect 
by a course of life that shall be an example of 
economy, and still not such as to affect your 
reputation or influence so that none will be 
induced to imitate you. I need not specify the 
particulars in which you will curtail your ex- 
penses. A heart, really and entirely devoted to 
the service of God in the spirit of the text, and 
regulated by a sound practical judgment, is the 
best solver of such questions of conscience. 
One thing is certain ; Whoever, except such as 
are upon the very borders of pauperism, lives to 
the full extent of his income, may know beyond 
a doubt that he is not giving himself to the 
service of God, and needs at once thoroughly to 
correct his manner of life. 



101 

And what shall we say to still another class ? 
— those who will be rich, and to this end lay up 
in store all their income, or being rich, appro- 
priate their property to themselves, instead of 
using it in the service of God to promote the 
spiritual welfare of man. Their course is so 
palpably opposed to their most evident duties to 
God and the world, that I know not what 
apology they can plead for it, and shall not 
trouble myself to invent one for them. God says 
to them, " Your riches are corrupted, and your 
garments are moth-eaten ; your gold and silver 
are cankered, the rust of them shall be a witness 
against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were 
fire : ye have heaped treasure together for the 
last days/ 5 Who, in view of the claims of a 
perishing world upon him, can conscientiously 
die rich ! 

The requirement of the text, as toe have ex- 
plained it, is reasonable, for it takes away no 
motive to industry. It adds motives exceedingly 
weighty. When it tells a man he may not labor 
for himself alone, it does not thereby tell him he 
may stop laboring. In the place of selfishness, 
it orders that love to God excite his energies to 
action ; and which ought to be the stronger 
affection ? Instead of his single little self, it 
places before him the whole world as the object 
9* 



102 

for which he is to labor ; and which is the 
greater, nobler, more commanding motive ? In- 
stead of providing the meat which perisheth, 
whether for himself or others, it invites him to 
supply the spiritual wants of our ruined race 
with the bread that shall never perish ; and 
which is a business best suited to the taste and 
capacities of an immortal being ? Indeed, it 
proposes to make life something worth living for. 
By urging you to enlist your energies in so 
great and good a work through the medium of 
your property, it adds new value to money. 
Since the benevolent operations of the day have 
shown what money can do, it is worth more 
than it was once. It has a sacredness about it 
which it never had before. 

It is reasonable, because it proposes an object 
needing all that is required of us. It asks not 
the devotion of yourselves to an object that is 
well enough without you, or of trifling import^ 
ance. Unevangelized men every where need 
the gospel. Scripture, history, and all recent 
accounts, declare them to be in a state of heart 
entirely unfitted for the purity and the holiness 
of heaven. Such a thing as primeval innocence 
is now found only in the Utopian fancies of po^ 
etry, or the baseless speculations of error. 
Among actual men it exists not. Paul says of 



103 

the heathen that they are " filled with all un- 
righteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetous- 
ness, maliciousness ; full of envy, murder, de- 
bate, deceit, malignity ; whisperers, backbiters, 
haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, in- 
ventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 
without understanding, covenant-breakers, with- 
out natural affection, implacable, unmerciful ;" 
and that " they not only do such things, but 
have pleasure in them that do them.' 5 

Profane history adds its unvarying testimony 
to the universal prevalence of the same un- 
limited moral corruption. Even amid the refine- 
ments of the most civilized nations, it showed its 
worst features. The polished literature which 
Greece and Rome have transmitted to us, is 
every where infected with its touch, and serves 
but too often only as a gilded conductor of its 
contagion. The reports of modern travellers 
but increase the amount of testimony to the 
same thing. Do they traverse the eternal snows 
of our northern regions to the Frozen ocean ; 
or trace the course of the Niger through the 
burning sands of Africa ; or penetrate the hith- 
erto impenetrable confines of China ; it is but to 
show to us new phases of the corruption of un- 
evangelized man. 

Examine the daily accounts of missionaries. 



104 

as, by experience and study, they increase the 
intimacy of their acquaintance with the moral 
condition of nations already known to us ; or, if 
you please, peruse the more superficial observa-. 
tions of tourists, taking care to look through the 
veil of apology for sin which is sometimes thrown 
over their descriptions : and you will find them 
ever adding to the catalogue of man's cor^ 
ruptions. The whole earth is indeed filled with 
violence ; all flesh has corrupted his way before 
God. And had not God pledged himself by a 
covenant that there shall no more be a flood to 
destroy the earth, we might any day be looking 
out for the waters of a second deluge. Surely 
while unevangelized man is in such a state, un-> 
biassed reason cannot but unite with Scripture, 
in declaring him totally unfit for heaven. 

Does cavilling unbelief or error protest, that it 
would be unjust still to send him to hell, be- 
cause after all he knows no better 1 Let the 
heathen themselves testify whether this apology 
for their sins is deserved. Their own testimony 
to their inexcusableness you will find in the 
numberless sacrifices and cruelties to which 
they subject themselves, to obtain the pardon of 
sin. Why does the Hindoo throw himself under 
Juggernaut's car, insert hooks in his back that 
he may be swung around in the air, lie upon 



105 

beds of spikes, or say his prayers between scorch- 
ing fires ? Why does the Mohammedan observe 
his month of fasting, allowing nothing to enter his 
mouth from morning to night ? or perform the fa- 
tal pilgrimage to Mecca, exposing himself daring 
a month's journey to the burning suns and arid 
sands of the desert ? Why does every false re- 
ligion prescribe some mode of penance or of 
sacrifice ? It is, to make satisfaction for sin, 
Such self-denying and cruel rites are submitted 
to, only to disburden the conscience from a 
sense of guilt. And their universal prevalence 
shows an equally universal consciousness of sin 
throughout the heathen world. The heathen 
thus testify unequivocally to their own desert of 
punishment. They need your efforts on ac- 
count of their perishing condition. 

On account of their numbers, also, they need 
the greatest efforts you can make for their 
spiritual welfare. How shall we give a tangible 
form to their immense multitude, and bring it 
within the reach of your comprehension ? Take 
the earth by languages. In how many out of 
all that have sprung from the confusion at Babel, 
is prayer offered to God daily with clean hands 
and a pure heart 1 To the praise of God's dis- 
tinguishing grace, our own dear native tongue, 
in which we learned to lisp the infant prayer, is 



106 

more generally and more extensively used for this 
hallowed purpose than any other. Perhaps a 
dozen others, most of them cognate European 
tongues, are similarly employed ; some of them 
however to a very limited extent. Giving charity 
her utmost range, you may add half a dozen more, 
in which the relics of the ancient churches of 
the East offer prayers that they understand not. 
The remaining unnumhered languages and di- 
alects, in which the tribes of men hold inter- 
course with each other, never convey to heaven 
any aspirations of spiritual worship ; except 
where, here and there, a converted heathen is 
just beginning to lisp in broken accents the 
praises of redeeming love. 

Take the earth geographically. Start with 
the sun, and survey every longitude upon which 
he shines in his diurnal course. Pass over 
every latitude, from the equator to the shores of 
the Frozen ocean on the one hand, and to the 
stormy capes of the extreme south on the other. 
In our own country and in Europe, the radiance 
of divine truth will meet your eye, though even 
there, in many parts, dark spreading clouds 
extensively obscure its brightness. Elsewhere, 
throughout the vast surface of the globe, broods 
heavily one dark night of ignorance, error and 
sin, except where, at long intervals, a Christian 



107 

colony, or a missionary station, has lit up a 
taper, making the darkness more visible. 

Take the earth statistically. Out of the seven 
or eight hundred millions of its inhabitants, only 
two hundred and twenty or thirty millions are 
called by the name of Christian ; and of these, 
hot more than three millions deserve that name, 
according to our ideas of piety. The rest, in one 
dense phalanx, are crowding the broad road to 
destruction, plunging at the rate of more than 
fifty thousand in a day into eternal perdition. 
My brethren, the result of the estimate is alarm- 
ing. There is hardly piety enough in the earth 
to stay the uplifted hand of God's righteous 
vengeance. Were he to threaten it with de- 
struction, as he did Sodom and its neighbors of 
old, and we should fall upon our knees to use 
the arguments of Abraham for its rescue ; I fear 
that, even at the rate of ten righteous men for 
the city of Sodom, we should hardly find real 
Christians enough in the earth to claim the 
gracious reprieve that was promised to the im- 
portunacy of the patriarch. — Have such an im- 
mense multitude, in such a condition, no need 
of your devoting your every effort to their spir- 
itual benefit ? And is not the requirement of 
such a devotion of yourselves reasonable ? 

The requirement is reasonable, because it 



108 

points out the only certain mode for the Chris-' 
tian to secure his oion highest enjoyment. What 
mars the happiness of man below ? Disappoint- 
ment. All are eager in the pursuit, of happiness, 
and sanguine in the expectation of enjoying it. 
And were the objects aimed at such as antici- 
pation makes them, and always to be obtained, 
man would be happy. But he is not happy. 
Disappointment meets him at every step and 
blights his hopes. The objects he aims at fly 
before him, or if overtaken, prove worthless. In 
his road to w r ealth, he meets with unforeseen 
and uncontrollable reverses ; and riches in pos- 
session bring with them cankering cares, or 
take to themselves wings and fly away. The 
reason of it all is, that while man, moved only 
by selfishness, aims exclusively at his individual 
interests, his plans are constantly crossed by the 
great plan of the Governor of the universe. 
God never made his arrangements for the gov- 
ernment of the w T orld, to meet the wishes and 
aims of selfish men. His great plan looks at the 
highest good of all, and he steadily pursues it, 
making every thing subserve to its accomplish- 
ment. When selfish man, therefore, sets up 
another object in his individual interests, he 
may expect that the plans he lays will constantly 
infringe upon the course pursued by his Maker ; 



109 

and that he who will do all his pleasure, will 
thwart them, and crown his exertions with 
nothing bat disappointment. 

But there is an object, in pursuing which we 
are sure of success, and which when obtained 
can never disappoint. It is the same at which 
God himself aims. This, anticipation cannot 
paint in colors that shall surpass the reality ; for 
God esteems it worthy of his own supreme desire. 
Nor in aiming at it, as we are laboring together 
with him who governs all things according to 
the counsel of his own will, can any thing make 
us fall short of our end. This object, so far as 
it relates to our province of God's dominions, 
and of course so far as we can have any thing to 
do with it, is the highest spiritual good of our 
race — the conversion of the world. To aim at 
this, is to fall in harmoniously with the course 
our Maker is pursuing, securing to ourselves a 
share in his success, and in the happiness it will 
occasion. And is not a requirement that leads 
so certainly to the highest happiness we can wish, 
reasonable? 

It in fact points out the only reasonable course 
we can pursue. Those who really and heartily 
thus enter the service of God, whether mission- 
aries abroad, or persons devoted to different 
branches of the same great work at home, though 
10 



no 

so often charged with enthusiasm and foolish- 
ness, are after all, if the principles of our religion 
are true, the only reasonable men. They place 
themselves just in the attitude, that exactly ad- 
justs all our relations to God, to ourselves, to 
the world, and to eternity. Our individual in- 
terests are of minor importance ; they treat them 
as such. God's great wish, the spiritual welfare 
of all, is the only object comparatively worth 
seeking ; and they aim at it. 

My brethren, did we all thus merge our in- 
terests in those of Christ's cause, each regarding 
himself as a simple private in one great army, 
marching onward to the universal establishment 
of his kingdom ; great would be our satisfaction 
and joy ! Contemplating the exalted nature of 
our service, we should look down free from 
anxiety upon the trifling events of the world, 
knowing that whatever they may be, the will 
of the Lord, which it is our object to promote, 
will be done. Having laid our foundation upon 
the Rock of ages, no storms and tempests 
would shake us. Sickness and death would not 
disturb us. Wars would not trouble us. Men 
devoted to this service have braved the frowns 
of kings with firmness, have faced persecution 
with boldness, and smiled with indifference at 
the fires of martyrdom. But to describe the 



Ill 

advantages and pleasures of the service of God, 
requires the harp of David, and the pen of Paul. 
Let us be satisfied with their description, and 
endeavor by obeying their direction to experi- 
ence the reality. 

3. Contemplate our obligations to comply ivith 
the requirement of the text. The apostle says, 
" I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of 
God." 

This word in this place is full of meaning. 
For what are ( the mercies of God/ but that sys- 
tem of salvation which the apostle had spent 
the whole of the preceding part of his epistle in 
explaining and defending 1 After proving inex- 
cusable guilt upon both Jews and Gentiles, so 
that " by the deeds of the law there shall no 
flesh be justified ; " to a world of such sinners 
he had announced a salvation, provided by the 
propitiatory death of Christ, so easy that by 
simple faith in Jesus it could be secured, so free 
as to be accessible to all over whom the curse 
of the fall had extended, and so sure that no 
power in earth or hell could separate from it 
those who should once embrace it. Such are 
the mercies to which he refers, and upon which 
he founds an obligation to comply with the re- 
quirements of the text. 



112 

It is an obligation of gratitude. And what 
species of obligation is more sacred, more bind- 
ing 1 In the reciprocal dealings of man with 
man, it is indeed greatly neglected. Conscience 
is too weak often to enforce it ; and human law 
is too limited to reach it. And it is almost re- 
garded as a sort of obligation which we are at 
liberty to meet or to neglect at our pleasure. 
The obligation which our modes of thinking 
and of speech most distinctly recognise, is that 
of an explicit stipulation or promise. This the 
law can reach and enforce ; and we come almost 
to understand, when obligation is spoken of, that 
it is of course something to which we have obli- 
gated or bound ourselves by an overt promise. 
But this is owing solely to our spiritual perverse- 
ness. There is a law by which the obligations 
of gratitude are just as tangible, and as easily 
enforced, as are the obligations of promise by 
human enactments. That law will call us to ac- 
count for every neglect of its requirements at 
the bar of our final judge. Then will it appear 
that no promise of ours could add to the obliga^ 
tions to serve God which lie upon us, The idea 
that it could, implies that we have a right to 
withhold such a promise. But have we that 
right ? Have we any such independence of God 
as entitles us to say what we will, and what we 



113 

will not do for him ? We have nothing which 
is not his gift, and which he has not a right to 
demand. We hold nothing in fee simple. We 
are not our own. Our obligations of gratitude 
to God go farther back than any promise we 
could make. So far from any thing's being 
added to them by an express promise on our 
part, they render the very making of such a 
promise obligatory. To withhold assent would 
be sinful. No obligation is so really binding as 
that of gratitude ; and no gratitude certainly is 
so great as that due for the unspeakable mercies 
of our God. 

What are those mercies, brethren, as they 
have been bestowed upon yourselves 1 As, from 
the first of your existence to the hour of death, 
every moment is filled with the experience of 
them ; so, would you recount them, your whole 
life must needs be taken up with the enumera- 
tion ; yea the ceasless songs of eternity would 
scarce suffice to finish the rehearsal. Would 
you calculate their magnitude, the task would 
not be easier. Even the temporal mercies of 
health and the comforts of life, in this land of 
liberty, intelligence, peace and prosperity, are of 
no slight value. But the mercy, which should 
be mentioned before all others, and from which 
avery other flows — the gift of God's only begotten 
JO* 



114 

Son — how shall that be estimated? What do 
you not owe to him ? By his grace you are what 
you are. Let all the strongest susceptibilities of 
your heart be awakened to contemplate the ex- 
ceeding riches of that grace. But for it, sunk 
as you are by nature in the depths of depravity, 
the fate of the angels who kept not their first 
estate, had been yours, and you had been re- 
served in everlasting chains under darkness, 
unto the judgment of the great day. He re- 
deemed jour life from destruction. Had the 
lines fallen to you in pagan lands, you would 
now have been bowing down to idols, with no 
other end awaiting you, than that of all the 
nations that forget God. But he hath made you 
to differ ; and here you are listening to the sound 
of salvation in the sanctuary, and enjoying all 
the blessed influences the Bible sheds upon 
society around you. Had you still gone on in 
your own way, it would have been the way of 
transgressors; the broad road that is conducting 
so many around you to destruction, would have 
been your path. But his Spirit, you trust, has 
arrested you, and the hopes of heaven are yours. 
And have you, beloved brethren, experienced 
such mercies at the hand of God ? Surely 
unspeakable gratitude must swell your hearts. 
And anxious to do something in return for him, 



115 

who has done so much for you, you will ask 
with Paul, "What shall I do, Lord?" To do 
his will, must be the dictate of the gratitude you 
owe him. Nor can it be felt that the obligation 
to this is other than the strongest possible. Did 
it need any ratifying or confirmation on your 
part, it has already been given. For you have 
by your own act, solemnly covenanted to be the 
Lord's. You cannot escape from your obliga- 
tion to do the will of your Saviour. And that 
will is, we have seen, that the spiritnal welfare 
of our race be promoted, that the world be con- 
verted. Every page of the Bible, every action 
of the Saviour, declares this to be the great wish 
of his heart. 

The obligation is strengthened by the fact, 
that Christians are the only agents the Saviour 
has appointed on earth to execute this his great 
desire. What is the simple provision he has 
made for the world's conversion ? By his pro- 
pitiatory death he has laid a foundation for the 
pardon of all who repent and believe in him. 
To produce among men this repentance and 
faith, (the indispensable conditions of pardon,) 
he has provided appropriate means, has ap- 
pointed agents to use those . means, and has 
promised an influence from above to give them 
efficacy. 



116 

The means he has provided, are his word, to 
be applied to the mind by reading, preaching, or 
the various other modes of instruction. The 
influence he has promised, to give them efficacy, 
is that of his Holy Spirit. But who are the 
agents? Some agents are needed. Without 
them, the means will never be applied, and of 
course can never be made efficacious ; except 
the gospel be preached by miracle, as it never 
was even in the age of miracles. He is no 
longer himself personally on earth, a preacher of 
righteousness. Angels he never employs to 
preach the gospel. The agents he has appointed 
are men. And among them, the only ones he 
can depend upon are Christians. Yes, Chris- 
tian brethren, to us has he confided this great 
agency ; making our cooperation necessary to 
the accomplishment of his purposes respecting 
our world, so that if we prove unfaithful his 
purpose fails. How awfully responsible is our 
situation ! On the one hand, neglectful of all 
our obligations to him, shall we disappoint the 
most earnest wish of his heart 1 And on the 
other, regardless of a perishing world, shall we 
make ourselves accessory to the destruction per^ 
haps of millions whose salvation he has made 
^dependent upon our agency ? 

The obligation is still further increased, by 



117 

his positive Command. His final charge to his 
church, his last will and testament, was the 
command, " Go into all the world and preach 
the gospel to every creature." This command., 
from the moment it was uttered till the present 
hour, has been binding upon the church. Oh 
the guilt of so long neglecting it ! The com- 
mand to repent, you say, rests in full force upon 
the sinner every moment of his life ; for not 
obeying it he has no excuse ; and if in the neg- 
lect of it he finally perish, the blame will be all 
his own. Precisely so is it with this command 
of our Saviour, in its obligation upon the church. 
We sometimes almost charge God with blame 
for leaving the heathen world so long in dark- 
ness. As well may we charge God with blame 
for the continued impenitence of a sinner, when 
he is commanded to repent and be saved, and 
voluntarily refuses. For toward the conversion 
of the world, God has done his part. He has 
provided the means, and commanded his agents 
to use them ; and it has always been his wish, 
that the command should be obeyed. Had it 
been, the work would long since have been done. 
But the church has disobeyed, and the world 
remains in darkness. To the sinner's own diso- 
bedience, his continued impenitence is to be 
charged ; to the church's disobedience is it owing 



11? 

that the world is stih tin i :u"erted. T 
is thrown entire.;" uoioi the inured 

an a sin a and idolatry to pervade the earth, 

ed energies : .;: entire race e reclaime 

And how great is this guilt ? Is it so enor- 

church of "God ? Look a: her hi- try and 

not hoarded :: e : ::; her. in i. .oiu 

has barrenness seized uo:n her. Heresies, 

scattered in the East, wer: : .1 f: : m 

are still tramplec under root. Upon loners m Eu- 
rope the pi ■ seized, and it stui ho'.ds them 
in the graso : f a ieahuhke oaralysis, The Re- 

tiou tor a time aroused oart to action, But 
the great asiness id sending hie gesnei to the na- 

rasnegle the land of the 

Reft . . ars in the st 10: :r 0: :.-:\:^y. 

A dead!; iethirg; ho 001.11:. 1: fasten itse'lf 
tn upon ou r 1 n c h u : : b e 5 : bnt in a happy 



119 

hour the spirit of missions awakened their en- 
ergies, and now they are impelled onward in a 
course of prosperity and advancement. In a 
word, let the church neglect her duty to the 
world, and her whole history shows, that nothing 
can save her from declension and spiritual death, 
inflicted as a punishment for her sin. And well 
it may be so ; for to suffer so may millions of 
souls to perish, whom she is under every possible 
obligation to reclaim, is a sin of no slight enor- 
mity. Who that hears me, by withholding his 
efforts from the great work of converting the 
world, will make himself a partaker in a sin of 
such magnitude ? 

Allow me to close my discourse with a few 
reflections.. 

1. The spirit of missions is the spirit of 
Christianity. It should be set as the sun and 
centre of the system, around which all its other 
peculiarities may revolve as primary or secondary 
planets. For Christianity is a religion not for 
you and me alone, but for the world. Its author 
laid down his life for the world. It solicits to 
be published to the world. The world, and not 
any man, nor set of men, nor any nation ex- 
clusively, has a right to it. He alone has im- 
bibed any thing of its spirit, who aims to give it 



120 

to the world. And the more he imbibes of it, 
the more will this be the leading aim of his 
conduct ; the more will he give himself actively 
and wholly to the work. 

But how different is this from the place hither- 
to assigned to missions? What is done for them, 
has been extensively regarded as something 
extra, or supererogatory ; hardly entering into the 
essential requirements of the gospel. It might 
be done, or left undone, at our option. It was 
benevolence, not duty. However little might be 
done, it was set down as so much positive credit, 
not as a miserable fraction of what we ought to 
do, bringing us sadly in debt. In the ordinary 
routine of prayer, public or private, after the 
presentation of numerous personal requests, and 
petitions for friends, the heathen were remem- 
bered in a single word or two, for a conclusion. 
Monthly concerts were but thinly attended, and 
in the prayers that were offered, every thing 
perhaps found a place before the great object 
for which those meetings were appointed, if that 
object was not in fact entirely neglected. In 
giving for the support of missions, the question 
very generally has been, not what, in the exer- 
cise of proper industry and self-denial, can be 
given consistently with other obligations ; but 
what can be given without being felt, without 



121 

sensibly curtailing one's income. And at the 
best, it was charity — -a name correct enough 
certainly, but too often used to cover some relic 
of the papal idea of supererogation, as if what 
is thus given, were not just as much due from 
us at the bar of God, as are legal debts at a 
human tribunal. 

Ministers have been in the same condemnation 
with their people. How rarely have missions 
been preached, as a regular part of that system 
of truth, which ministers are bound to preach, 
whether men will hear, or whether they will for- 
bear? The apology of some special occasion 
has been deemed necessary in order to their 
being introduced with propriety into the regular 
instructions of the sanctuary ; or they have been 
crowded into some extra-meeting in the evening, 
or in the week ; or perhaps neglected entirely by 
the pastor, and left to be brought forward only 
by occasional agents. And then, so strange was 
their sound, that you might overhear one and 
another in the congregation, as it retired, say- 
ing to his neighbor in tones of disappointment, 
' I came to hear the gospel preached, and not 
missions.' As if the spirit that breathed in the 
blessed annunciation of the angels at Bethlehem, 
" Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, 
which shall be to all people" and which would 
11 



122 

carry that annunciation to every nation, had 
nothing to do with the gospel ! 

So long as missions have continued thus to be 
thrust into a by-corner in the estimation and 
treatment of Christians, we need not wonder 
that the world should still lie in wickedness. 
Quite a different place must be assigned them, 
the place that is properly theirs, before the world 
can be converted. They must be preached by 
ministers as a regular part of the gospel, an im- 
portant portion of the message they are charged 
by God to deliver. Line upon line, and precept 
upon precept must be given respecting them, 
until Christians come to feel that their duty to the 
world is a duty ; a duty the neglect of which 
brings enormous guilt; a duty binding upon 
every individual. Christians must gird them- 
selves for the work, as a work appropriately 
theirs, and one of vast moment. Their time > 
talents, money, must be regarded as consecrated 
to it, by virtue of the connection they sustain 
to the Saviour ; and must be actually given to it, 
as the great business of life, with the feeling 
that for this very work it is, that they are con- 
tinued upon earth. When such become the 
feelings and conduct of Christians, we may ex- 
pect the speedy aproach of the millennium. 
They will be its harbinger, as the putting forth 



123 

of the leaves of the fig-tree foretell that summer 
is nigh. Blessed be God, some Christians of 
this stamp already exist, and their number is 
increasing. They are the first glimmering dawn 
of the latter day glory. 

2. Missionaries are not the only persons ivho 
are bound to make sacrifices. The entreaty is 
to all, that they present their bodies a living 
sacrifice to God. There seems to have been 
hitherto an impression, that while missionaries 
tear themselves away from the endearments of 
home, and submit to the privations of barbarous 
lands ; Christians who remain, are at liberty to 
seek their comfort and gratification. It is ex- 
pected of a missionary that he will of course lead 
a life of self-denial, but other Christians may do 
it, or not, as they choose. The whole world 
would cry out, and justly too, against the mission- 
ary, who should lay his plans for the accumulation 
of property, and for self-indulgence, but Chris- 
tians at home pursue such plans, and the world 
moves not its tongue. Public opinion lays upon 
the missionary heavy burdens and grievous to be 
borne, if the sacrifices alluded to may be so 
named, but Christians at large it hardly con- 
strains to touch them w T ith one of their fingers. 

And is there in reality one set of obligations 



124 

laid upon missionaries, and another more lenient 
upon the rest of the community ? Where will 
you find them prescribed? In the Bible? I 
know not upon what page. I discover no dis- 
tinction made there between missionaries and 
yourselves. They are singled out by not a 
solitary requirement that is not equally aimed at 
others. Where is it said to them, deny thyself, 
and the same broad command does not rest equally 
upon you ? The providence of God has called 
them indeed to go in person, as missionaries, 
and to you he may not have pointed out such a 
course. But has he thereby imposed upon them 
an obligation to self-denial from which you are 
exempted ? Are you not bound to labor equally 
hard at home in the same great work ? The 
species of self-denial laid upon you, and the 
place in which it is to be practised, are different; 
but does not the amount pressing upon both 
remain the same ? I really cannot find that God 
has imposed upon me one obligation to make 
more sacrifices as a missionary, than others are 
bound to make as Christians, however different 
in kind our respective sacrifices may be. 

I say not, that I ought not to make sacrifices. 
I complain not of being expected and required 
to make them. Were I inclined to complain, 
another rather than myself ought to preach to 



125 

you the doctrine of this sermon. But such a 
charge, conscience does not bring against me. 
I have advanced no principle which I do not 
regard as binding upon myself. Indeed, if 
what has been said may have seemed to you too 
close and unqualified an application of Chris- 
tian obligation, and a requirement of too much ; 
my apology is that it is a mere exposition 
of what my views of our religion have long led 
me to feel to be obligatory upon myself; and 
regarding God as no respecter of persons that 
he should excuse others, I have believed the 
same to be binding upon you, and deemed it my 
duty to inculcate it, 

Nor do I feel any delicacy, because I am a 
missionary, in urging upon you, as I have done, 
the duty of laboring for the conversion of the 
world ; as if I were pleading for my own benefit. 
I stand here upon high ground, and wash my hands 
clean of every contamination of such a charge. 
Suppose I am soliciting means to be sent abroad 
as a missionary, Am I thereby asking a per- 
sonal favor ? If the means are not £iven, I 
remain at home, in the bosom of intelligent and 
endeared friends, surrounded by the comforts 
which give charm to civilized life, edified by the 
means of grace which the gospel provides for 
the growth of piety, enjoying the benefits of our 
11* 



126 

free and happy institutions, and looking forward 
to the bright prospects which here open so widely 
before the young and enterprising. If the 
means are furnished, I am torn away from all 
these endearments, to take up my lot among a 
people of a strange tongue, and of a stranger 
heart; where discomfort is written upon all 
the modes of living, and the grossness of semi- 
barbarism upon the manners of society ; where 
the gospel sheds abroad none of its genial influ- 
ences through its appropriate rites, and despotism 
withers the nerves of enterprise and improve- 
ment ; and where no temporal prospect opens, ex- 
cept a life of toil repaid by no income above what 
is required for a daily subsistence. To whom, 
let me ask, can the contribution of the means to 
make such a change in his circumstances be a 
personal favor ? 

Suppose I am urging you continually to in- 
crease the revenue of the missionary treasury, 
am I thereby soliciting any thing for myself? 
If it be increased a hundred fold, more mission- 
aries are sent forth, and though the means put into 
our hands to do good, by schools and books, are 
multiplied, yet not a cent is added to our in- 
come. It matters not to me personally, whether 
you give a hundred or a thousand dollars. My 
subsistence I only have at the best, and that $t 



127 

the worst I must have, or return to the comforts 
of home. 

These sacrifices of the missionary life are just 
as they should be. Missionaries need to be 
chosen men, selected by the application of se^ 
vere tests. The expectation of such a life as 
now awaits them, is a severe test which the 
unqualified are not likely to stand. Let the 
prospect that they will be well paid and made to 
abound in temporal comforts, be held up before 
them, and it may invite into the field a multi- 
tude of drones who will shrink from the burden 
and heat of the day. The tendency in this re- 
spect even of the honor and popularity now 
conceded to missions, needs the watching of a 
jealous eye. I submit whether any more dis- 
courses upon the moral dignity of the missionary 
enterprise, are needed. Such a view is doubtless 
correct, and may be taken to silence objectors. 
But beware how it is held up to invite mission- 
aries into the field. There needs to be con- 
nected with the missionary work, such sacrifices 
of temporal advantages and pecuniary prospects, 
as shall deter all but hardy soldiers of the cross 
from entering it. — But ought not similar sacri- 
fices to be connected with a profession of re- 
ligion, for the very same reason ? The church 
was perhaps never so pure, as when the sword 



128 

of persecution, hanging over its members, de- 
terred all the unqualified from entering it. Let 
the duty of Christians to the world become so 
fully understood, that a sense of consistency 
shall require them, in all the details of life, to 
make their own interests entirely secondary to 
the great interests of Christ's kingdom, and it 
may be found that missions are as great a puri- 
fier of the church as ever persecution has been. 
Such a purifier is needed, or the church is 
ruined. May public opinion soon pronounce a 
course of self-denying sacrifice to be as much 
demanded of every Christian by virtue of his 
profession, as it is now of the missionary, by 
virtue of his calling. 

Finally, allow me to remark, that the require- 
ment of the text, as it has been explained, is 
after all no sacrifice, in the sense now often given 
to that word. How strangely has the term sa- 
crifice become perverted ! We commonly un- 
derstand by it an act necessarily unpleasant 
and painful. But is it not almost a libel upon 
piety, that such an idea should become attached 
to a word which originally and properly signifies 
the consecration of a present to God ? Among 
the wiles of Satan in the papal church there is 
a similar perversion of prayer, The saying of 
prayers is one of the most common penances 



129 

imposed by the priests upon penitents at the 
confessional ; that which is the Christian's vital 
breath being thus turned into a painful punish- 
ment. Is it scarcely less a wile of Satan, that 
the sacrifices which God requires us to make, 
have come to be regarded as of course an irk- 
some, undesirable business ? It ought to be a 
source of the greatest pleasure that we have any 
thing to give in return to him to whom we owe 
so much. And the greater the gift, even to the 
entire consecration of ourselves to him, the 
greater ought the pleasure to be. 

Such is actually the case. Whoever has given 
himself wholly to his Saviour's work, making it 
the great object of his life, whatever his specific 
employments may be, has found in it supreme 
delight. It is the bursting forth of the generous 
emotions of a heart, that swells with gratitude to 
him to whom its all is due. Have you, brethren, 
any of those generous emotions ? Pray enjoy the 
pleasure of expressing them in your lives. Be 
they expressed by giving in sacrifice to God 
what has heretofore been devoted to self, the 
very act will be a pleasurable enlargement of 
the soul. Self is too small an object for the vast 
active powers with which oar Maker has en- 
dowed us. They can be fully expended upon 
nothing less than the great work he has made 



130 

us for and assigned us. Give yourselves wholly 
to this work, though it be by still laboring upon 
your farm or at your merchandize, and then will 
you find, that for the first time you are in your 
proper place. You are doing just what God 
intended you should do, and the soul is satisfied. 
All is right. Do this and other delights also 
will be yours. A reflection of the happiness 
you occasion to others, will be returned upon 
you. And when, by the expansiveness of your 
benevolence, that happiness is spread over the 
earth, how intense must be this reflection, as it 
converges upon you from every quarter ! Your 
enjoyment will be a participation of the highest 
delight of the Saviour, as in his great work of 
benevolence he sees of the travail of his soul 
and is satisfied. May we so live that no small 
share of this enjoyment shall be the portion 
of us all ! 



SERMON III. 



Farewell request in behalf of the 
syrian mission. 



2 Thessalonians hi. 1. 

Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may 
have free course and be glorified, even as it is with you. 

These words are an entreaty of the apostle to 
the Gentiles, for the prayers of the ehurch in 
behalf of himself and his fellow-laborers. In 
taking leave of you to-day, I propose to avail 
myself of it, to solicit your prayers in behalf of 
myself and my associates in the Syrian mission. 

Such an application of the passage is coinci- 
dent with its original intent. The situation of 
the great missionary who uttered it, in regard 
both to places and circumstances, was almost 
the same as ours. In my former journeyings I 
have often crossed his track, and stood upon 
places where his feet have trod. I have sailed 



132 

along the coast of Cyprus, from Salamis to 
Paphas, where he commenced his apostolic 
labors ; have crossed the sea where he passed 
over from Troas with a straight course to Samo- 
thracia to go into Macedonia; have mourned 
over the ruins of the church of his planting, at 
Corinth ; and have walked along the harbor 
where he was wrecked at Malta. 

The Syrian mission with which I am now to 
be connected, has its seat at Beyroot, where I 
have already spent more than a year, and where 
I am expecting hereafter to reside. It was 
known, not long after Paul, by the name of 
Berytus, but is not mentioned in the Scriptures 
of the New Testament. It lies on the coast, 
between Tyre, some fifty miles on the south 
— where I have once rode upon the shore on 
which Paul kneeled in prayer with the brethren, 
as he was going bound in the spirit unto Jeru- 
salem — and Antioch, at a greater distance on the 
north, where he was separated by the laying on 
of the hands of the brethren for the work where- 
unto he was called. To the east some sixty or 
seventy miles, across Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, 
is Damascus, where he was converted. And 
southeast some hundred and fifty miles, is Jeru- 
salem, where he once sat at the feet of Ga- 



133 

maliel, and was afterward imprisoned for the 
testimony of Jesus. 

His circumstances were hardly more different 
from ours, than the places where he labored. 
Then, as now, arbitrary despotism, in the hands 
often of venial and irresponsible governors, 
swayed there extensively its iron sceptre. So 
united was this despotism with an imposing 
system of false religion, as to be but an in- 
strument in its hand for the oppression and 
persecution of Christianity. The same union 
do we find now between Mohammedanism and 
the Turkish government, attended with similar 
effects. He had brethren by name scattered 
every where, to whom he sought to publish the 
salvation of the gospel first ; but who regarded 
him uniformly as guilty of heresy and an apos- 
tate. Such brethren do we encounter in the 
nominal Christians of Turkey, and similar is 
the light in which they view us. In many other 
particulars might the analogy between his cir- 
cumstances and ours be traced out, showing 
how appropriate is the language of the text in 
the mouth of a missionary to Syria. In one 
respect he differed from us. He was an apostle. 
But surely, if in that character he felt con- 
strained to plead so earnestly for the prayers of 
Christians ; with how much more importunacy 
12 



134 

does it become us, feeble, erring missionaries, 
to solicit your prayers. 

In filling my mouth with arguments for this 
purpose, may I be allowed to say, 

1. It is your duty to pray for us. — A 
peculiar feature of the religion you profess, is,, 
that it is a religion for the world. Its provisions 
of salvation are large enough for the world. It 
is the will of its founder that it should be em- 
braced by the world. The first annunciation of 
his forerunner respecting him was ; " Behold 
the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of 
the world." His last command to his disciples 
was ; " Go ye into all the world, and preach the 
gospel to every creature." Upon this feature of 
our religion is founded the solemn duty, so 
earnestly enjoined by Paul, of praying for all 
men. " I exhort first of all," says he to Timo- 
thy, " that supplications, prayers, intercessions, 
and giving of thanks, be made for all men." 
" For this is good and acceptable in the sight of 
God our Saviour, who will have all men to be 
saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the 
truth." 

The obligation to pray specially for missiona* 
ries, arises from the connection of their labors 
with the conversion of the world. To them, as 



135 

the bearers of the message of salvation to the 
nations, is this great work committed. Upon 
their success depends its accomplishment. In 
no other way can it be effected. For the faith 
of men in the gospel cometh by hearing it. But 
how shall they hear it without a preacher ? and 
how shall there be preachers except they be 
sent — except there be missionaries ? The obli- 
gation is strengthened by the fact that missiona-^ 
ries are your agents, they are doing your work. 
The command to preach the gospel to every 
creature, lays an equal duty upon every Chris- 
tian to engage in the great work of evangelizing 
the world. Missionaries volunteer to serve per- 
sonally in the front ranks of the battle, suffering 
its hardships, and exposed to its dangers. 
Thereby they relieve you from this service, and 
you are allowed to remain at home, to perform 
here your share of the great work, in whatever 
department may be assigned you. And what 
department is there to be assigned you, but to 
send reinforcements to these your substitutes, 
and to uphold their hands by prayer ? Doubt- 
less in the just apportionment of the rewards of 
victory in the day of final triumph, " as his part 
shall be that goeth down to the battle, so shall 
his part be that tarrieth by the stuff." But in 
order to this every man must do the duties of 



136 

his station. See to it, brethren, that there be a 
record on high of unceasing prayer offered by 
you for missionaries, to be adduced as proof 
that the duties of your station have not been 
neglected. 

I limit my solicitations for your prayers to- 
day, to the mission in Syria, because of my 
personal connection with it. God in his provi- 
dence having caused me, during a residence of 
more than a year in that country, to become 
acquainted with the spiritual wants of its inhabi- 
tants, and led me to devote my life to them, I 
feel constrained to stand up and plead in their 
behalf. My heart is drawn toward them by 
strong ties of compassion, and I would fain throw 
around yours some of the same cords of attach- 
ment. Not that I would draw your Christian 
sympathies exclusively thither. Would that 
there were missionaries here from the Sandwich 
islands, from India, from China, from every 
other part of the earth, to plead in like manner 
for the people among whom their lot is cast ; 
that your hearts might be attracted to all the 
perishing inhabitants of the earth. 

2. We need your 'prayers for ourselves. — We 
need them for the preservation of our health and 
life. Of both these we make some, perhaps a 



137 

great, exposure in taking up our residence in 
Syria. The climate, it is true, is not a bad one. 
In no part with which I am acquainted, will it 
compare for insalubrity with the low countries 
in our southern States. Beyroot enjoys two ad- 
yantages of location, of no slight importance to 
health. A refreshing sea-breeze blows from the 
southwest, during the warmest part of almost 
every day of the summer. And Mount Lebanon 
rises up so near on the east, that by a ride of 
three or four hours, a climate can be found upon 
some airy projection, of any needed degree of 
coolness. 

But after all, it is a southern climate, very 
different from ours in New England, and added to 
the other evils to be encountered, must make a 
change in the constitution which may be most 
serious. For nearly six months hardly a drop 
of rain descends to produce those invigorating 
changes with which frequent showers so delight- 
fully attemper the heat of our summers. During 
several of the hottest weeks, the thermometer 
indicates very few degrees of variation in the 
temperature, and from day to night the change 
is extremely small. Occasionally, also, when 
the fibres of the system have thus become re- 
laxed, and the nerves as it were laid open, the 
east wind coming up from the wilderness, the 
12* 



138 

Arabian desert, bursts over Mount Lebanon with 
a violence apparently only accumulated by the 
obstructions it encounters, and pouring down its 
heated blasts, seems to touch and wither the 
very springs of action and of life. 

By retiring to the mountains, we are re* 
freshed indeed with a change of temperature , 
but think not that we find there a retreat of 
pleasure in airy and elegant country-houses, 
The dwellings of the inhabitants are little rude 
cottages, made of walls of unhewn stone, plas* 
tered, terraced, and floored with clay ; and so 
uncomfortable and difficult to be obtained, that 
the buildings erected for domestic animals are 
sometimes the most habitable residences that 
can be procured. I spent one winter there, 
without chairs or a table, in a house which had 
no windows, and only the earth for a floor, with 
a terrace so leaky as to admit not a little of every 
shower that fell, and doors so rude as to require 
a stone to be rolled against the largest crevice 
to prevent the jackalls from entering my room at 
night. And this house was the most commo- 
dious, with one exception, of any in the village. 
Mr. Bird, with his family, passed the preceding 
summer in a building previously appropriated to 
sheep and goats^ enlarging it somewhat by sur- 
rounding it with an arbor of the branches of 



139 

trees. And the English consul, the same sea- 
son, lodged his own family and Mr. GoodelFs 
in a rude edifice erected for the rearing of silk- 
worms. 

The houses of Beyroot are of a far better 
construction. But having thin walls of porous 
stone, often saturated with rain, and being en- 
tirely without fire-places, they form but cheerless 
residences in the stormy season of winter, though 
the thermometer rarely sinks to within ten de- 
grees of the freezing point. It may be truly 
said of the people that they make no provision, 
in the structure of their houses, or in their do- 
mestic arrangements, for the real conveniences 
and comforts of life. It has been affirmed even 
that they have no word for comfort in their lan- 
guage. The remark is not true. But the high- 
est idea they would express by such a word, 
would most likely be the spending of an evening 
with pipes and coffee, listening to imaginary 
tales of Arabian invention ; or sitting in medita- 
tion, with the same accompaniments, under the 
shade of a tree by the side of a salient fountain. 

To be transferred from a New England home 
to such a home as this, is a change which, in 
addition to the change of climate, may well be 
expected to have its effect upon the constitution. 
Add to it also, besides other indescribable but 



140 

more grievous annoyances, the perplexities of 
dealing with so perverse a people, and all the 
weighty anxieties and wearisome labors of the 
missionary life ; and you will not wonder at my 
opinion, that a missionary must calculate to end 
his labors sooner than if he remained at home. 
Impaired health and shortened life are among 
the items to be reckoned in counting the cost of 
the conversion of the world. For it so happens, 
that a very large proportion of the unevangelized 
nations inhabit warm climates, while mission- 
aries can be furnished, at present, only by the 
temperate regions. What then shall be done ? 
Shall we draw back from the work ? Never ! 
For the fear of shortening our earthly pilgrim- 
age a little, let us never shrink from a work, in 
which our great Captain and Leader laid down 
his life after only three years' labor. Rather 
Jet us, soliciting your prayers for strength and 
support, enter upon it with the cheerful spirit of 
him who learned in whatsoever state he was 
therewith to be content ; being instructed both 
to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and 
to suffer need. 

We need your prayers, also, for our spiritual 
health and growth in grace. We need them for 
this, much more than for the preservation of the 
health and life of the body. You know not our 



141 

exposures in this respect. Contrast our circum- 
stances with your own. How many are the 
means of grace that surround and press upon 
you on every side ? The Sabbath interposes 
regularly its solemn stillness to arrest the cur- 
rent of worldliness in your own breasts, and in 
the movements of men around you, giving a 
place for eternity to step in and present its great 
realities for a share of your attention. The 
sanctuary opens its doors weekly, inviting you 
to listen to the affecting warnings, invitations, 
and precepts of the gospel, proclaimed by the 
embassadors of Christ. The meeting for con- 
ference and prayer exhorts you to forget not 
God in the avocations of the week, and con- 
tributes to throw a savor of devotion into your 
daily employment. Numerous Christian friends 
in personal intercourse, apply the stimulus of a 
word in season and out of season, to keep up 
the tone of your piety. And the whole expres- 
sion of public opinion, as it comes to you from a 
widely extended Christian community, or is 
echoed even in the sneers of the ungodly at 
your inconsistencies, says, in the language of the 
great cloud of witnesses passed into the heavens, 
* Lay aside every weight, and the sin which 
doth so easily beset you, and run with patience 
the race that is set before you.' 



142 

Still, how often do you find yourselves flagging 
in your Christian course. And you call in the 
excitement of special occasions, of protracted 
meetings and the like, to prevent the recur- 
rence of long nights of spiritual sleep. Yet, 
after all, you but partially succeed ; and, with 
so many supports to your piety, are in constant 
jeopardy of spiritual declension. 

What then shall be said of the deadness 
of soul to which our condition exposes us. On 
the Sabbath we meet together a few names of 
us, to worship God and listen to his voice of 
mercy in the sweet accents of our native tongue. 
And precious are such seasons ' with Christ 
within the doors. ; But how different the feel- 
ings they occasion from what you enjoy here in 
the great congregation, where so many sympa- 
thizing hearts mingle their prayers and their 
praises in one cloud of incense before the mercy- 
seat ! Around us nothing meets our observation 
to inspire feelings congenial with the sacredness 
of the day. The Mohammedans acknowledge 
it not at all. The Christians generally abstain 
from servile labor, but it is only to give them- 
selves up to indolence, recreation, or holiday 
amusements. So little idea have they of the 
real sanctity of the Christian Sabbath, that for 
our strictness in observing it, they are ready to 



143 

accuse us of being Jews. Almost the only situ- 
ation in which I have been able, while travelling, 
fully to realize on the Sabbath the sacredness of 
the season, has been when removed from the 
view of men, perhaps shut up in solitude to 
the contemplation of some uncultivated rural 
scene, fresh from the hand of nature. When 
in such a spot on a Sabbath morning, thought 
at once flies away to the quiet scenes of home, 
and imagination conjures up around me all the 
tokens of sacredness and of rest, which at such 
times have been there so often witnessed. But 
the presence of man spoils all, and in his busy 
haunts, the whole vision vanishes at the view of 
his profanations. 

The influence upon us of the personal inter- 
course of others, and the expression of public 
opinion &s it comes to us in whatever way, how 
different from what you experience ! No example 
of devoted active piety sets itself before us to 
invite to an equal zeal for God. No just ideas of 
Christian consistency in the public mind, stand- 
ing ready to detect our faults, spur us onward in 
our race. No sympathizing views of Christian 
doctrine and experience come from any quarter 
to confirm our faith. We feel that we stand 
alone ; and in seasons when God hides his coun- 
tenance so that we cannot say from our inward 



144 

feelings, " I know that my Redeemer liveth," 
unbelief is ready to throw a veil of doubt over 
the very existence of personal piety on earth, in 
ourselves or others, and to make us say in haste, 
" all men are liars," and in his religion, " surely 
every man walketh in a vain show.' 7 

Is it strange that in such circumstances we 1 
should sometimes, standing upon the brink of 
spiritual declension, be left to shudder at the 
apprehension that the cold atmosphere we breathe 
may chill us to the vitals, and precipitate us into 
the same lethargy of the heart and the con- 
science that has seized upon all around us? 
The exposure is a real one, and needs to be set 
in its proper light. For it has been overlooked 
by Christians in their conceptions of the mission- 
ary life. It has been almost imagined that one 
need only give himself up a sacrifice to God in 
the privations of a missionary's lot, to reach as- 
a matter of course, the highest degree of piety, 
and obtain the most exalted spiritual enjoyment. 
The idea is an utter mistake. The missionary, 
more than all other men perhaps, needs to use 
constant watchfulness and diligence that his 
faith fail not, and his love grow not cold. He is 
a soldier in a post of danger, and must never 
lay aside his armor. 

Other trials, compared with this, have in my past 



145 

experience made no impression upon me. Many 
have been the inquiries that friends have made, 
since my return, as to my manner of life in 
respect to food and raiment and other comforts 
in the journeys I have taken. To them all, I 
have honestly answered, Whatever of physical 
privations and hardships I have experienced, 
have been truly little thought of at the time, 
and soon forgotten ; but the wants of the soul, 
like the panting of the hart after the water- 
brooks in a dry and thirsty land where no water 
is, have been felt and are remembered. And in 
the prospect which is before me, the idea of 
being deprived of your privileges, and exposed 
to such spiritual dearth as reigns where I go, is 
the only thing that presents itself to throw any 
real damp upon my feelings. 

Think not that I forget the precious assurance 
made to an apostle, when under sore trial, "My 
grace is sufficient for thee." To forget it, would 
be the height of ingratitude in one who has so 
often experienced its verification. It is most 
true, that through the simplest means, the mere 
reading of the word and private prayer, God is 
able and ready to bestow the most abundant 
grace upon his children. Such means, at the 
very worst, ever remain to the missionary; and 
precious means they are. For, what consola- 
13 



146 

tion, what joy, what hope, do they not convey 
into the soul ! Missionaries do find it verified, 
that " there is no man, that hath left house, or 
parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for 
the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive 
manifold more in this present time," (more of 
happiness, the object at which all the world 
aims,) " and in the world to come life everlast- 
ing." 

But this is not a matter of course from the 
mere nature of their calling. In order to it, 
there is something for them to do. They must 
set a double watch upon their hearts ; they must 
be diligent in their arduous business ; they must 
be constantly in the attitude of looking upward 
in humble expectation of the blessing. There 
is something also for their friends to do. They 
must pray for missionaries. They must go to the 
fountain of grace, and seek supplies for them. 
This favor is asked of you to-day. You expect 
much from your missionaries, much personal 
holiness in themselves, much usefulness to 
others ; so much that our heart almost fails 
at the view of it. Would you have your hopes 
not disappointed, by our halting in our race and 
sinking down into lukewarmness and sloth ? 
Then pray for us. I urge the request because 
I know and feel its importance. Assured of 



147 

your compliance, we can go cheerfully and with 
buoyant hopes. But, ah ! how the heart sinks at 
the fear of your neglecting it ! I beseech you, 
brethren, give no occasion for such a fear. In the 
hour when God is nigh to your hearts, when his 
ear is open to your requests, when you have 
power to prevail with him ; then fail not to re? 
member your missionaries. Pray for us that our 
faith, fail not, 

3. Your prayers are necessary to the success 
of our labors. — What is it that we propose to 
do ? Allow me, in few words, to spread out our 
field before you. Syria is a general name for 
the country that lies along the whole breadth of 
the eastern end of the Mediterranean sea ; ex~ 
tending inland to the deserts of Arabia, and 
having the territories of Egypt on the south, and 
the river Euphrates with the mountains of Cilicia 
on the north. Its principal port, and the resi^ 
dence of most of the foreign consuls and mer- 
chants for the whole coast, is Beyroot. The 
southern part of it is Palestine, the ancient land 
of promise. On the north of it, beyond the 
Euphrates, is Mesopotamia; the only easy access 
to which, is through Syria. Such is our field 
geographically. 

The people — though, with the exception of the 



148 

Syrians in Mesopotamia, their language is Ara- 
bic, indicating their common national descent 
from the Arabian stock — are divided into numer- 
ous religious sects. There are a few thousand 
Jews, dwelling in Safed, Tiberias, Jerusalem, 
Hebron, and scattered in some other towns ; 
but nearly all of them are foreigners from Po- 
land, and elsewhere. The great mass of the 
native inhabitants became early infected with 
the Arabian apostacy, and are now strict Mo- 
hammedans ; a few of them belonging to the 
Sheey, but most of them to the Sunny sect. 
With them may be classed somewhat more than 
100,000 Druzes in Mount Lebanon, with two or 
three smaller sects at the north ; whose doctrines 
are secret, but are understood to be a corruption 
of Mohammedanism. Relics of the ancient 
Christian churches, planted here by the apostles, 
still survive the scourges of the false prophet, 
and persons bearing the name of Christian are 
numerous. Of these, a considerable body be- 
long to the proper oriental Greek church, being 
subject to a patriarch of their own, styled the 
patriarch of Antioch, but resident at Damascus, 
who is generally a Greek. They speak only 
Arabic, and all their religious services are in 
that tongue. A part of them, not many years 
ago, seceded to the papal church, and are called 



149 

Greek Catholics, their language and their church 
books being still Arabic. The Maronites in 
Mount Lebanon, numbering about 100,000, are 
a distinct body, subject to the pope. Their 
only spoken language is Arabic, but the language 
of their prayers being Syriac, indicates their 
origin to have been from the ancient Syrian 
diocese of Antioch. They are in fact pretty 
well ascertained to be descendants of the Mono- 
thelites, a sect that anciently broke off from that 
patriarchate, and afterward embraced papacy. 
Of the other two heretical sects, the Nestorian 
and the Monophysite, which, at a still earlier 
period, seceded from the same diocese ; the 
Monophysites, now palled Jacobites, are still 
found in small numbers in some parts of Syria, 
but their principal residence is in Mesopotamia. 
The Nestorians are in the mountains of Kurdis- 
tan, north of Mesopotamia, and in the regions 
adjacent. The public services of both are in 
Syriac, and in some parts that, is also their 
spoken language. Out of them both, the papists 
have gathered a new church, called the Chaldean, 
with the same language. I once supposed, from 
what I could gather from history and from 
travellers, that the three ancient heretical sects, 
just mentioned, had taken entire possession of 
the great Syrian diocese, once Jhe most honorr 
13* 



150 

able of all the four patriarchates into which 
Christendom was divided, and that the proper 
original Syrian church had become extinct, 
except as it is represented by the Greek patriarch 
at Damascus, presiding over the Arab Christians 
of the Greek church. But I have since discov- 
ered evidence of the existence of several villages 
of Syrians in Mesopotamia, still adhering to the 
parent stock. — Such is our field statistically; 
inhabited by two or three Mohammedan, and 
five or six Christian sects, using only two 
languages, one of which, the Arabic, is almost 
universally prevalent. 

What we propose to do, is to bring all these 
sects, throughout the whole extent of this inter- 
esting country, to embrace the truth as it is in 
Jesus. The work is one of immense mag- 
nitude. 

How difficult is the work of leading sinners 
to repentance, among yourselves ! Many there 
are here present, perhaps, who have until this 
moment stoutly resisted all the influences that 
have been brought to bear upon them for this 
end. Children they are of pious parents, and 
subjects of many prayers, but parental solicita- 
tions and admonitions have been of no avail. 
The Bible has spent its power upon them, and 
become insipid as an idle tale. The most pow« 



151 

erful calls of the sanctuary have been listened to 
but to be rejected, until they cease in the least 
to arouse them from their spiritual torpor. All 
the varied, solemn, and exciting influences of 
revivals of religion they have withstood, until it 
seems as if no new or more effectual way of 
access to their hearts can be devised. The 
strongest bonds of friendship, even, have had no 
power to draw them heavenward ; for while 
numbers of intimate companions have set their 
faces to go thither, they, rather than accom- 
pany them, have burst the closest ties of affec- 
tion, and substituted for them the lash of ridicule 
and scorn. And now, in a time of spiritual 
declension, you ask respecting such, What shall 
make them feel? How can their hearts be 
subdued ? That no means can of itself do this, 
you are most deeply sensible, as you ought 
always to be ; and despairing of human efficiency, 
you go to God as the being who alone has the 
requisite power. The final resort, the only one 
that gives encouragement, even here, amid all 
the means, your privileges furnish, for the con- 
version of impenitent men, is prayer. And that 
always gives encouragement, for it calls in the 
aid of the power whose province it is to control 
the heart. 

How vastly more difficult is the work in Syria ! 



152 

Superadded to the obstinate opposition of the 
heart to the truth, which is common to unre- 
generate man every where, there are these pe- 
culiar difficulties to be encountered. The Mo- 
hammedan, of whatever sect, meets Christianity 
at the threshold, with a frown of hereditary con- 
tempt. The Bible he has been taught to regard 
as so corrupted by Christians as no longer to 
contain the law and the gospel, once revealed to 
Moses and to Jesus. Among the interpolated 
doctrines, the trinity and the sonship of Christ 
especially, he has been habituated formally to 
deprecate in his daily prayers ; rejecting at the 
same time every idea of the atonement. In the 
worship of those around him whom he regarded 
as followers of the Bible, the nominal Christians, 
he has ever recognized the adoration of images 
and pictures, as a part of the idolatry his reli- 
gion condemns above all things else. And their 
bad conduct he has looked upon as evidence of 
the influence of a religion worse than his own. 
The Metawaly, a branch of the Sheey sect, 
somewhat numerous in Syria^ regard us as cer- 
emonially unclean to the touch. I have known 
a woman break a pitcher of water she had just 
filled, because a Christian, seeking a draught 
from it to quench his thirst, had contaminated it 
by the touch of his lips. The Druze takes the 



153 

opposite extreme. His religion allows him to 
deny his faith whenever his convenience re- 
quires, and to profess to be of the religion of 
those he is with. With this chameleon-like 
faculty he eludes your search. Or if you seem 
to find him, it proves in the end to be but a 
shadow that you grasp. After the freest exhibi- 
tion of the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, 
he will declare with great apparent complacency 
and satisfaction, that you have only been explain- 
ing his own religion. 

To the nominal Christians, the doctrines we 
preach are a stumbling-block and foolishness. Ac- 
customed to regard their own as the pure apostolic 
church, whose doctrines and rights have been 
guarded and defended by a long line of venerated 
fathers, and to look upon us as condemned her- 
etics ; it seems to them at the outset, a strange 
infatuation that brings us so far with the pre- 
sumptuous expectation of teaching them religion. - 
Long divided among themselves into different 
sects, the questions which separate them, — such 
as the manner of making the sign of the cross, 
the use of leavened or unleavened bread in the 
sacrament, the procession of the Spirit from the 
Father only, or froln the Father and the Son, 
the degree of intimacy in the union of the 
two natures of Christ, and the like, — have so 



154 

exclusively occupied their minds when they 
have reasoned at all upon religion, that the 
strange doctrines of spiritual regeneration, and 
justification by faith, which we bring them, 
seem beyond the reach of their apprehen- 
sion. These doctrines never having been illus- 
trated among them in the life of one truly pious 
man ; there is wanting an example suited to give 
a clear conception of their nature, and a deep 
impression of their reality ; and we stand almost 
in the attitude of visitors from another planet, 
describing objects which our hearers have no 
senses to perceive. Ever used to a religion of 
the senses, presenting a constant succession of 
pompous ceremonies to be adored, and an order 
of men empowered to pronounce audibly the 
pardon of sin ; to adopt our spiritual religion, 
seems to them like letting go the substance to 
embrace a shadow. Brought up, too, with the 
greatest horror of defection from their faith, in- 
stilled into their minds by parental instruction 
as a preservation against the snares of Moham- 
medanism, an opprobrium threatens them, should 
they change their religion for ours, such as is 
unknown in any case of conversion among us, 
bringing not only contempt upon themselves, 
but disgrace upon their families. And then, 
fhere is the priesthood, with their income chiefly 



155 

from ceremonies which our doctrines would un- 
dermine, ready, whenever the alarm is 'given 
that their craft is in danger, to echo the cry of 
the silver-smiths at Ephesus, " Great is Diana of 
the Ephesians." 

You may imagine that the absurdity of their 
doctrines is so evident, that to convince them of 
it may be an easy task. But there is some 
truth in the aphorism, ' the greater the absur- 
dity, the firmer the belief There is such a 
thing as abusing reason till it cannot perceive 
the truth, as well as hardening conscience till it 
cannot feel it. A belief in what is plainly con- 
tradicted by the senses, is brought about only by 
a distortion, if not a dethronement of reason, 
which unfits it to respond to the most palpable 
demonstration. He that has brought his mind to 
credit transubstantiation, for example, has placed 
it beyond the confines of reason, and thrown it 
into a shape to believe any thing however ab- 
surd, and to reject any proof however con- 
vincing. 

Nor does the burdensomeness of their rites 
afford us a more certain ground to hope for suc- 
cess ; as if in consequence of it, they could be 
more easily persuaded to renounce them. That 
very burdensomeness gives value to their re- 
ligion. The object of their rites is to make 



156 

satisfaction for sin. When burdened with the 
consciousness of guilt, it is to them they fly for 
relief. Of coarse the more oppressive their 
weight, the more thorough is the satisfaction they 
give. In this way does every false religion, up 
to a certain point, come to "be valued in propor- 
tion to its oppressiveness. 

When laboring among such a people, to whom 
shall we go for success, but to God 1 If that 
be your only resort in this Christian land, how 
much more shall it be ours in that land of dark- 
ness ? If any one is inclined to underrate the 
necessity of the efficient influences of the Spirit 
of God for the conversion of men, let him be- 
come a missionary, and his error will be cor- 
rected. It is our only encouragement. Had I 
no where else to look for success but to the 
inherent efficacy of means, and the power of 
human persuasion, I should never move a step 
upon the errand on which I go. I wonder not 
that men of the world despair of the accom- 
plishment of any thing by missions, for they in 
fact look no where else. They see only the 
external means, which are confessedly in them- 
selves entirely inadequate to effect the objects 
aimed at. Our encouragement is in the promise 
of the Spirit of God to give efficacy to the means 
for the renovation of the hearts of men. In 



157 

the strength of this promise we go. How great 
need then have we to pray for its accomplish- 
ment ! and how great need that you should 
unite your prayers to ours ! When a revival is 
desired here, it is not thought enough that the 
minister alone pray. The whole church clusters 
around him to uphold his hands, by wrestling 
with God for a blessing in public prayer-meet- 
ings, and in the retirement of the closet. Nor 
are a few prayers deemed sufficient. How often 
are hundreds offered for one individual, a parent, 
or a brother, or a sister. And they are fervent, 
heart-felt, too ; not like the formal, general re- 
quests so often offered for the conversion of the 
world. Now wc are surrounded by no such 
body of Christians to wrestle for a blessing upon 
our labors. And shall we pray alone, with 
none to uphold our hands ? We look to you, 
brethren, to uphold them. Prayer annihilates 
distance, and when you pray for us, it is as if 
you were actually around us. Pray for a revival 
with us, as you sometimes pray for a revival 
among yourselves, and the Holy Spirit will not 
be withheld. 

How often is the question asked the mission- 
ary, ' What success has attended your labors V 
Would that every such question were accompa- 
nied by another to the person who asks it, ' How 
14 



158 

much have you prayed for our success V The 
success of missions, provided missionaries are 
faithful in the application of means, will corres- 
pond in its extent to the amount of prayer offered 
by Christians at home. And the failure of mis- 
sions is about as likely to be the fault of Chris- 
tians here, as of missionaries abroad. Brethren, 
there is a responsibility resting upon you, in 
consequence of this dependence of missions 
upon your prayers, of which you are perhaps 
not aware. Had you prayed as you ought, who 
can say that thousands more might not have 
been already gathered from the wanderings of 
heathenism into the fold of Christ '? 

4. There is encouragement for you to pray. 
The obstacles we have to encounter are indeed 
appalling. But Christianity has once triumphed 
in those same regions over obstacles that were 
as great. Did Paul meet with prejudices fewer 
and less obstinate than we have to contend 
with ? The Jews, wherever he met them, gen- 
erally treated him as the propagator of a pesti- 
lent heresy. The pagan idolaters regarded his 
doctrines as contemptible foolishness. The 
artisans of Ephesus mobbed him, and the phi- 
losophers of Athens mocked at him. Such a 
list of perils from the enemies of his religion, as 



159 

he has left upon record, do modern missionary 
has yet encountered. How was he imprisoned 
by magistrates, and stoned by the people ! His 
only human protection was his Roman citizen- 
ship ; and that, unlike ours, at the best but enti- 
tled him to an appeal to Caesar's judgment seat — 
a heathen tribunal, at which he was at last con- 
demned to martyrdom. The perils of modern 
missions are not at all to be compared with those 
encountered by the founders of Christianity. 
How rarely have missionaries been put to death, 
or imprisoned ! The apostles found the empire 
of the world wedded to paganism. Now the 
power of Christian nations is predominant in the 
earth. All the obstacles the apostles met, were 
overcome by the mighty efficacy of divine grace. 
That efficacy is promised for our aid, wherever 
the means can be used. 

How extensively the means can be used in 
Syria, I have shown on a former occasion. The 
facts need not be repeated. Allow me to tell 
you now in what way they are used. My ac- 
count will describe the ordinary labors of the 
missionaries at Beyroot, when I arrived there in 
1827. It was near the commencement of their 
operations. 

The preaching of formal sermons to regular 
congregations, was dispensed with. Congrega- 



160 

tions might doubtless have been collected ; and 
preaching had, in fact, been previously at- 
tempted by Messrs. Fisk and King. But in 
view of the organization of the ecclesiastical es- 
tablishments of the country, it was deemed 
preferable to take less ostentatious, though 
perhaps quite as effectual and scriptural, ways 
of access to the hearts of the people. We 
welcomed them to our houses, and so far as the 
way was open, visited them at theirs ; instruct- 
ing them through the medium of personal inter- 
course and private conversation — a mode of 
instruction, possessing peculiar advantages for 
ferreting out error from its subterfuges, and 
adapting truth to the various attitudes of differ- 
ent minds. It was the mode, you will recollect, 
most frequently adopted by our Saviour, in 
his labors as a teacher of righteousness. And 
now, as in his day, the habits of the people 
are peculiarly favorable to it. It might perhaps 
appear somewhat more strange now, than it 
seems to have been considered then, for crowds 
to gather around an itinerant teacher, and follow 
him from place to place. But so little is time 
valued by them, that they seem always to have 
leisure enough to spend hours with us, though 
only curiosity urges them. And scarcely half a 
day passed, at the time I speak of, without our 



161 

being visited by some. Among them were oc- 
casionally individuals from a distance. Nor 
was it difficult to lead them to religious re- 
flections. Of their own religion, they are al- 
ways thinking and ready to speak. Suffer them 
to direct the conversation, and this propensity 
would lead to nothing profitable. But we could 
avail ourselves of it, to win their attention to the 
fundamental doctrines of the gospel. A large 
proportion of those who came, were in fact in- 
quirers, desirous of such conversation. Among 
these were some, who, ashamed or afraid to be 
seen with us, came, like Nicodemus of old, by 
night. For conversation with such, Mr. Bird 
had a private room, accessible without passing 
through any other part of his house. He used 
sometimes to be called up at night, by persons 
from abroad. 

Family prayers afforded another occasion of 
communicating religious instruction. Among 
the natives, family devotions are unknown. 
With our habits in that respect they w r ere found 
to be interested, and prayers being held in the 
mission families a part or all of the time in 
Arabic, some used to be present. Hence was 
suggested the idea of adding this to our system 
of operations. And the doors were thrown 
open every evening at Mr, GoodelFs, for public 
14* 



162 

family prayers. The word of God was placed 
in the hands of as many as came in, each one 
being requested to read a verse or two in his turn. 
All the missionaries were present to make re- 
marks as the reading proceeded. And whoever 
had a question to ask, or a word to say, was 
invited to say on. The result was a series of 
remarks or discussions, every evening, always 
interesting, and often animated. A prayer by 
one of the missionaries closed the whole ; and 
the parties dispersed with some new inquiries 
started, or some new truths implanted in their 
minds. 

On the Sabbath, two meetings of a more 
formal kind were held at stated hours, of a 
character not Unlike Bible-classes ; though, on 
the part of those who attended, there was gene- 
rally no preparation. At one, a chapter was 
read and an exposition given of it by a mission- 
ary, in its application to those who were present. 
At the other, discussion was expected to be 
more free, and if any one had a question, or a 
difficulty, or a theory of his own, he proposed it, 
the missionaries standing ready to meet the 
cases that came up, as their knowledge and in- 
genuity might enable them. 

A room full on such occasions was often a 
delightful scene. The Scriptures have a direct- 



163 

ness of application there, which they have not 
here. Besides the similarity of the scenery and 
customs they describe to those with which all 
are now familiar ; the Pharisaism and vices so 
pointedly denounced by them, still prevail in 
forms but little changed ; and their evangelical 
doctrines, appearing in some shape upon almost 
every page, meet face to face the prevalent 
forms of error now embraced by the people. 
So direct is their application, that one of my 
brethren used often to say to me, that he knew 
comparatively nothing of their meaning and 
force before he read them in Syria. To see the 
sword of the Spirit, thus sharpened, turning 
every way to attack the Protean shapes of false 
doctrine, was interesting in the extreme. Under 
its blows, the hearts of some would inflate with 
anger, that found rest only in passionate retorts 
upon the truth itself, or in attempts to fasten the 
charge of inconsistency, or of equal error, upon 
the missionaries who explained it. Others after 
a long opposition, would settle dow T n in silent 
obstinacy, or break away and walk no more 
with us. And others still, smitten with the 
conviction of its truth, would rise up in its 
defence. 

The Arab mind is of a cast to add to the 
interest of such exercises. Active and in- 



164 

genious in its character, its fertile invention is 
ever bringing forward some new theory or ex- 
planation of Scripture to amuse or to be op- 
posed, of a nature sometimes that tests not a 
little the discrimination of the missionary. 
With something of that impatience under re- 
straint, that might be expected in the descend- 
ants of Ishmael, it enters into discussion with a 
freedom, and imbibes a spirit of inquiry with an 
ease, that I have hardly found among any other 
people in those regions. 

It should be added, that, at the time of which 
I speak, the Spirit of God was evidently moving 
upon the minds of the people. Some gave 
tokens of his presence by inquiring with listen- 
ing anxiety for the truth ; and others by exhibit- 
ing the graces of the Spirit already planted in 
their hearts. That ' faithful martyr,' Asaad 
Shidiak, had not long been converted, and was 
then recently imprisoned. His case, so as- 
tonishing to all, acted as a trumpet to publish 
abroad our fame, and public attention was 
riveted upon us from far and near. Our meet- 
ings were not unfrequently attended by persons 
from a considerable distance. 

Another mode of communicating religious 
knowledge to the people, was education. Of 
this they have great need. Their schools are 



165 

few and miserably conducted. Men destitute 
of every qualification, except an ability to use 
the rod, taught them, and no elementary books 
were used except simply for reading. I never 
saw an arithmetic or a geography in Arabic 
while I was there ; nor even a spelling-book, 
except one printed by the missionaries at Malta. 
Their way of learning to spell, was to take up a 
reading-book, name every letter of a word with- 
out dividing it into syllables, and then pronounce 
the whole together. Grammars they have, but 
they are never taught in common schools, and 
very few ever attend to them. Under such a 
system of education, only a small proportion of 
the males even, ever learn to read ; and of the 
females hardly any. I heard of one woman, 
while there, who could write a letter to her 
husband when absent. Her case was mentioned 
as a curiosity. Since then, I have heard of a 
little girl, daughter of a friend of the mission- 
aries, who at the age of eight or nine, had read 
the New Testament through. She probably 
stood alone in the whole Turkish empire. To 
a people so ignorant of letters, our way was 
necessarily to a considerable degree hedged up. 
Being unable to refer to the written word for a 
decision of the differences between us and their 
priests, it was natural they should confide in 



166 

those to whom they had ever yielded spiritual 
obedience, rather than give credence to stran- 
gers. 

A system of schools, under the direction of 
the missionaries, was adapted to meet this exi- 
gency ; and before I arrived, they had already 
established fourteen, which contained between 
seven and eight hundred children, about a 
hundred and fifty of whom were girls. The 
attendance of the latter was procured by offering 
a premium to the teachers, to encourage them 
to come. The teachers were paid by the mis- 
sionaries twice the amount for the tuition of 
girls, that they had for boys. Such a system of 
schools made the pupils acquainted with much 
religious truth ; for the books used were re- 
ligious, containing many portions of the Scrip- 
tures. Children thus brought together, formed 
interesting congregations for the missionaries to 
address, as they from time to time visited the 
schools. The teachers were brought into more 
intimate connection with the missionaries than 
the children, and were often with us, as attend- 
ants at our religious meetings. The instruction 
of the girls was looked upon with peculiar in- 
terest. Females are there, owing to their ig- 
norance, the strong holds of superstition. More 
devoted themselves, than the other sex, to the 



167 

rites of their religion, and more submissive to its 
priests, their influence checks the inquiries of 
their husbands, and fastens the shackles of 
bigotry upon their children, To enlighten 
them, is to lay the axe at the root of the tree. 

Upon the reading community thus created by 
their schools, as well as upon those who could 
already read, the missionaries brought another 
mode of missionary operation to bear — it was 
the circulation of books. The Bible was put 
into our hands by the British and Foreign Bible 
Society for distribution. And the press of the 
Church Missionary Society at Malta, furnished 
us with tracts and a few elementary school- 
books. In this department, however, only a 
commencement was made. Our own press had 
not begun to print in Arabic. It will be a part 
of my business on my return, to put it in opera- 
tion, and that too in the country itself where the 
books are to be circulated. The step will be a 
bold one, but Providence seems to have opened 
the way for it ; and I trust it will have his 
favor. 

The circulation of books w T e consider an im- 
portant item in our missionary operations. The 
press in modern missions has sometimes been 
said fully to supply the place of the gift of 
tongues in those of apostolic times. In one 



168 

respect the press has the advantage. It almost 
gives ubiquity to the missionary. It enables 
him, by sending a book, to preach where his 
voice cannot reach, and to do it in many places 
at the same time. Its influence meets with a 
hindrance, in the inability of a vast portion of 
the inhabitants of the earth to read. To remove 
this hindrance, a feature has been introduced 
into modern missions which did not exist in 
those of the apostles — the establishment of 
schools. The apostles established no schools; 
for a knowledge of letters was not necessary to 
the efficiency of their extraordinary means of 
publishing the gospel — the use of tongues. In 
order to the efficiency of the means providentially 
given us — the press — a knowledge of letters is 
necessary, and we every where establish schools. 
Nor is it enough that books be made, and 
that people be capable of reading them. There 
must be agents to distribute them, and to dis- 
tribute them judiciously. To throw out a vast 
quantity of books indiscriminately upon an un- 
evangelized community, is a waste of money 
and a waste of truth ; for they will be trampled 
under foot. We have made the experiment, 
and have found our press of little effect any 
farther than missionaries superintend the dis- 
tribution of its publications. The books must 



169 

be put into the hands of those who will read 
them, or they are waste paper. To circu- 
late them thus, faithful agents are necessary. 
Such agents we have not been able to find 
among merchants or travellers. Missionaries 
alone can be successfully employed. And it is 
a fact, that the thing which limits the influence 
of our press now, is the want of more mission- 
aries to put its publications into circulation. 
So, I apprehend, it will be found every where. 
The more Bibles and tracts you print for for- 
eign distribution, the more missionaries you 
must send to distribute them. The press is an 
instrument to be employed by the missionary 
to aid him in his work. The moment you 
attempt to push it before the missionary, to work 
itself, as a principal instead of an auxiliary, 
your attempt will be a failure. 

Such are some of the ways in which, in 
our missionary operations in Syria, the truth 
is made to bear upon the minds of men. 
They are the ways in which we preach the 
gospel. And do they not furnish abundant en- 
couragement to you to pray for us ? What 
other encouragement does the gospel point to ? 
Or what other encouragement does the history 
of the apostles lead us to expect? Simple and 
weak the preaching of the word may seem to 
15 



170 

be, as a means of breaking down the prejudices 
of the bigoted, removing the blindness of the ig- 
norant, and renewing the hearts of the sinful. 
But it is the very means, and the only means 
p; ascribed in the gospel. It was by the foolish- 
ness of preaching that it pleased God in Paul's 
day to save them that believe. God has not 
seen fit to appoint any imposing means, with an 
invariable efficiency attached to it, for the ac- 
complishment of his great work upon the heart. 
The means is evidently so inadequate to the 
end, in itself so manifestly inefficient, that the 
power necessarily appears to be of God. It is a 
simple instrument in the hands of the Spirit to 
break the obdurate heart of the sinner. And 
wherever the means are used, wherever the 
truth is brought in contact with the mind ; 
there this instrument is put into the hands of 
the Spirit, and those who confide in his almighty 
power to wield it, find scriptural ground for en- 
couragement. 

What other ground for encouragement does 
apostolic history lead us to look for ? The 
apostles were indeed endowed with the gift of 
miracles ; but by miracles they did not convert 
men. Their miracles were an interposition of 
God by which he gave his attestation to the 
truth of their doctrines — a proof of inspiration 



171 

necessarily required by the laws of reason and 
of mind, and the only infallible test to dis- 
tinguish a true prophet from a false one. But, 
for this end, the miracles of the apostles are of 
as much use now, as in the days of their preach- 
ing. Then they were a proof to those who saw 
them ; now they are a proof to those who are 
informed of them by authentic history. They 
have done their work, and we need no repetition 
of them. There still remains to us the only 
means ever appointed for the conversion of 
men — the preaching of the word. When the 
apostles displayed the miraculous power of 
speaking with tongues on the day of pentecost, 
their hearers only mocked and accused them 
of being drunk with new wine ; when Peter 
preached, they were pricked in their hearts, and 
cried out, " Men and brethren what shall we 
do?" An angel appeared by miracle to Corne- 
lius, but it was only to direct him to send for 
Peter to preach the gospel to him. Paul was 
struck blind by a vision on his way to Damas- 
cus ; but it was not until Ananias preached unto 
him Jesus, that the scales fell from his eyes, and 
he was filled with the Holy Ghost. . 

Had we the holiness and the faith of the 
apostles, I know not why we should not have 
every encouragement to expect success, and 



172 

speedy success, that they had. These qualifi- 
cations, alas, though we might and ought to 
have them, we have not. Still the stinted measure 
of holiness with which we criminally rest satis- 
fied, gives some weight to our instructions. So 
unacquainted are the people with any other 
motive of conduct, than selfishness, and so ac- 
customed to discredit all mere professions ; that 
the motive we assign for coming among them, 
and the doctrines we teach, seem to them at first 
as idle tales. But learning at length that we are 
honest, as it is now generally conceded that we 
are, and being able to detect no sinister motive 
for the benevolence we exhibit among them ; 
they are obliged to ascribe to our religion an 
influence which theirs has not, and our instruc- 
tions commend themselves to their consciences 
and their hearts. 

Some instances of the influence of Christian 
character have encouraged us not a little. 
During Mr. Goodell's residence in Mount Leb- 
anon after the battle of Navarino, an Arab priest 
cultivated his acquaintance. Some weeks after- 
ward, being myself in the same village, the same 
priest called me up at night to relieve him from 
the agonies of poison, which some enemy had 
administered to him. In the prospect of imme- 
diate dissolution, his anxieties were divided 



173 

between himself and his children. He called 
upon God to have mercy upon his soul. His 
children he gave to Mr. Goodell. 'Let him 
take them/ said he, 'he may teach them his 
religion and any thing he chooses. He is a 
good man. He will be a father to them. They 
shall be his.' Relatives and friends, at that 
trying hour, were set aside, and the missionary, 
a foreigner and a stranger, was selected to take 
care of his little ones, for his character had 
gained his confidence. — My teacher was an in- 
stance of the influence of a Christian's death. 
The devoted Fisk died at Beyroot in the tri- 
umphs of faith. During his sickness, his native 
friends were admitted to his bed side, and 
listened to his conversation. The scene was 
new to them. That men should die resigned to 
their fate, was the most they had ever expected 
from their religion. That one could die rejoicing, 
none had ever dreamed of; and the witnessing 
of it in Mr. Fisk, impressed them with the feel- 
ing that his religion had an excellence entirely 
foreign to theirs. The impression was ultimately 
sanctified to the youth, who afterward become 
my teacher ; and I ever loved him as a Christian 
brother. 

If such be the influence of the imper- 
fect character of missionaries now ; what 
15* 



174 

would it not be, were we possessed of the holi-* 
ness of the apostles ? That we may possess 
that holiness, your prayers have already been 
earnestly solicited. 

Pray also that we may have their faith; and 
not only that we may have it, but that you may 
have it yourselves. Does any one shrink from 
the exercise of it as a presumption, under the 
impression that a long time will be required for 
the accomplishment of the work? Of such I 
would ask, Why we are to take time into our 
account at all. If we are to labor until men 
become as enlightened as most impenitent sin^ 
ners are here before they are converted, and 
after all see a vast majority shutting their eyes 
against the light that is thrown upon them, the 
task must indeed be endless. But is such a 
result necessary ? May we not expect the 
hitherto unevangelized to repent under less truth 
than gospel- hardened sinners? Our Saviour 
said of Chorazin and Bethsaida in his day, that 
if the mighty works which were done in them 
had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would 
have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and 
ashes. Is it for us to say how much evangelical 
truth the mind must know in order to conversion? 
May not the Spirit employ the smallest possible 
quantity, for the renewal of the heart? Look 



175 

at the effect of Peter's sermon at pentecost. A 
discourse only a few minutes long, was blessed 
to the conversion of three thousand, who were 
gathered from many and distant regions, most of 
them probably until that hour ignorant of the 
Saviour. Why had so little truth such speedy 
and great success? The Holy Ghost was there. 
Let the same almighty agent give equal efficacy 
to the first sounds of the gospel as they spread 
from ear to ear in heathen lands, and time may 
almost vanish from our account in reckoning the 
cost of converting the world. May not some" 
thing like this rapidity of effect be expected to 
attend the dissemination of the gospel ? The 
same Holy Spirit that wrought such wonders at 
pentecost is promised now. Would we pray and 
labor, with the faith of the apostles, who can 
say with what rapidity the gospel might spread ? 
The visions of the ancient seers would be realized, 
Nations might be born in a day ; 

" The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks 
Shout to each other, and the mountain-tops 
From distant mountains catch the flying joy, 
Till, nation after nation taught the strain, 
Earth roll the rapturous hosanna round." 

That you will thus pray in faith for us in 
Syria, is the request I now urge, I urge it in 



176 

view of the encouragement our labors present. 
And is such encouragement no motive ? Does 
the opportunity of giving to so many immortal 
souls, now hastening inevitably to destruction, 
the means of securing their salvation, present 
nothing to affect the Christian's heart ? To 
their ancestors are we indebted for all the bless- 
ings that Christianity has conferred upon us ; 
for from them first sounded out the word of truth. 
Does it gratify no emotion of grateful obligation 
in your breasts, to be able to return thither the 
light you have borrowed ? Does it awaken no 
sacred associations in your souls, to have your 
missionaries republish the gospel along the 
mountains that once listened to the strains of 
David, and to the prayers of Jesus; and to have 
it said of them by some long lost sheep, brought 
back from his wanderings to the fold of the 
great shepherd, ' How beautiful upon the moun- 
tains are the feet of him that bringeth good 
tidings, that publisheth peace, that saith unto 
Zion, thy God reigneth' ? Pray for us, and 
the literal Zion, so long trodden under foot of 
the Gentiles, may again ' arise and shine, her 
light being come, and the glory of the Lord 
being risen upon her.' Would it not delight 
you to hear of your missionaries— would you not 
almost go in person to see them, sitting down 



177 

with hundreds converted through their labors, 
to commemorate the dying love of Jesus, on the 
spot where he first instituted the supper? Such 
scenes we hope yet to witness. Yea, may we 
not expect to witness another thrilling sight ? — 
missionary societies banded together to send the 
gospel forth again from Jerusalem round about 
unto the remotest nations, and holding their 
anniversaries on Mount Olivet itself, where the 
command was originally given by the ascending 
Saviour, " Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the gospel to every creature." " Pray for us, 
brethren, that the word of the Lord may have 
free course and be glorified, even as it is with 
you," and all this shall yet be seen. 

You have now had spread out before you in 
detail, the field your missionaries in Syria oc- 
cupy, with the labors we perform, and the pros- 
pects that lie before us. In view of them will 
you not bid us "God speed." We want, not 
only the promise of your prayers, but your bless- 
ing and your cheerful approbation, saying to us 
" Be of good cheer ; " that the tears of separa- 
tion may not be tears of regret, but of deep-felt, 
though it may be somewhat sorrowful, pleasure. 
I can hardly find it in my heart to suppose, at 
this affecting moment, that any here are looking 
on with disapprobation. Yet some may say, 



178 

Why subject yourselves to so much privation to 
do good abroad, when you can do equally as 
much at home, that calls most imperiously to be 
done 1 Let me point out to such the broad dis- 
tinction there is between the claims of the im- 
penitent in Christian lands to the labors of 
Christians, and those of the unevangelized. To 
the former the gospel has already been preached; 
they know the way of salvation ; the church has 
in a measure discharged her duty to them ; and 
if they perish the fault will be their own. Not 
so the heathen. They know not how they may 
be saved ; according to the ordinary dispensa- 
tions of divine grace their salvation is impossi- 
ble ; and that, through the criminal negligence 
of the church, in failing to publish to them the 
gospel. Shall we stay at home, to urge the offers 
of mercy upon those who have over and over 
again rejected them ; and leave an infinitely 
greater number to perish without giving them 
the opportunity of accepting these offers 1 

Who would ask us to do this? Would the 
impenitent themselves 1 Let me remind such of 
the responsibility they would thus assume. For 
the sake of having that salvation, which you 
already know, proclaimed to you again and 
again, perhaps only to be rejected, as it has 
hitherto been; you would keep it back from 



179 

millions who for the want of it must lie down in 
eternal sorrow. You would take away the key 
of knowledge, neither entering in yc T ~*selves, 
nor suffering those who would to enter in. Be- 
sides destroying your own souls, you would ac- 
cumulate to yourselves the guilt of being acces- 
sory to the destruction of millions more. It is a 
charge that ought to be urged upon the con- 
science of all impenitent sinners in Christian 
lands, that they are accessory to the destruction 
of the heathen. For why is it, that in the pre- 
sent dearth of ministers, more cannot be spared 
to go to the heathen, except that they are needed 
at home, to aid in the conversion of those who 
know the gospel and ought long since to have 
accepted it. 

Would that all such who hear me would now 
accept it, and no longer throw themselves in the 
way of the salvation of those who are ready to 
perish. It would be delightful thus to receive 
your co-operation. But we may not wait for it. 
The call of those who are sitting; in the region 
and shadow of death is imperious ; and you 
must not detain us. We must pass you by. 
Seeing ye deem yourselves unworthy of eternal 
life, lo we turn to the Gentiles. In doing it, our 
garments remain clear of the blood of your souls. 
For you know your duty. Shall the separation 



180 

be a final one ? Shall the decisions of the last 
day fix it forever, by drawing between us the 
impassable gulf. Oh, upon whom of the friends 
that now listen to me, shall I hear then pro- 
nounced the dreadful sentence of eternal ban- 
ishment ? May God grant the renewing efficacy 
of his grace to you all, that such may be the end 
of none of you ! 

Of the professed followers of Christ who are 
present, I trust that none can find it in his heart 
to interpose a discouraging or a dissuasive word 
at this moment of separation. Yet some may 
say, your course speaks louder for the benevo- 
lence of your heart, than for the wisdom of your 
head ; for your hope of success is visionary. 
Such I would ask to review the expose that I 
have made in this discourse. Have any fanci- 
ful visions, any poetic rhapsodies, any high 
wrought appeals to the feelings, been indulged 
in ? Has it been other than a plain matter-of- 
fact statement ? In counting the cost, the trials 
and privations have not been kept out of sight. 
To the obstacles in the way of success have 
been attributed their full weight. The inade- 
quacy of the means we use, in themselves con- 
sidered, has been pointed out. The foundation 
of our hope of success has been laid entirely in 
the scriptural doctrine of the almighty efficiency 



181 

of divine grace. If there be any thing visionary, 
it is in the expectation that this grace will be 
given in answer to your prayers. And here 
there is no mistake in the general doctrine of 
the efficacy of prayer when offered. Onr cal- 
culations can prove to be visionary, only by your 
neglecting to offer your prayers. 

Will you occasion us such a disappointment, 
my Christian friends? The thought shall not 
be indulged. You will take no pleasure in see- 
ing us labor in vain. You will rejoice in our 
success. For the tender sympathies of friend- 
ship and Christian love shall still bind us all 
together, and interest us in each others' welfare. 
None of these strong ties are severed by our 
departure. It is a separation of body, and not 
of heart, that now takes place. We do not leave 
you because we love you not, or would cease to 
love you. Nor would we have you think of us 
as dead, though so far away in foreign lands. 
Let us still live in your memories and in your 
hearts — live to be the subjects of many prayers. 
Shall we not have many delightful meetings yet, 
at the throne of grace ? 

A cheering thought occurs to me as I am 

proffering this parting request. It is that a 

great treasure of prayer is already laid up in 

heaven for those among whom we are to labor, 

16 



182 

They are descendants of pious ancestors. And 
think you not that the patriarchs, prophets, 
martyrs and primitive disciples of Christianity r 
offered many prayers for every generation that 
should descend from them ? And shall not the 
children be beloved for the fathers' sake, and 
these prayers be had in remembrance on their 
behalf? Yes,, in going where we do, it is no 
presumption to cheer ourselves with the thought, 
that we have the prayers of Abraham, of David, 
of Isaiah, of Paul, and the whole host of the 
earliest followers of the Lamb, for our success. 
And as we shall approach the shores of their 
native land, may we not almost imagine their 
sainted spirits to be there to welcome us with 
their blessing on our errand of love ? 

Add your prayers and your blessing to theirs, 
then doubtless shall we come to our home in 
heaven rejoicing, bringing our sheaves with us. 
And when, in company with those who may be 
given to us as crowns of our rejoicing, we shall 
meet their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 
and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, you 
also will have occasion to participate in our joy, 
and we shall all sit down together at the mar- 
riage supper of the Lamb. Until that happy 
meeting, beloved friends, farewell. 



ADDRESS I. 



TRIALS OF xMISSION ARIES.* 



Dear Brethren, 

This occasion brings fresh to remembrance 
my own emotions, when called, more than six 
years ago, as you are now, to leave my friends 
and country. My first impressions and anxieties, 
too, at entering successively the scenes to which 
you are about to go, all come back renewed. 

I am reminded of the misgiving-of-heart that 
assailed me, as the ship glided from the harbor, 
and boldly plunged into the Atlantic ; seeming, 
while she unfeelingly tore me from home, pre- 
sumptuously to defy the winds and waves to 

* Delivered in Park street Church, Boston, on the evening of Octo- 
ber 24, 1832, to the Rev. Elias Riggs, Rev. William M. Thomson, and 
Doct. Asa Dodge, about to embark as missionaries to the Mediter- 
ranean. 

16* 



186 

match their mighty power with human skill. I 
recollect my strange reluctance to credit my 
senses, when, at Malta, cowled monks, grated 
nunneries, images of saints at the corners of the 
streets and carried in pompous procession, 
priests in their confessional-boxes shriving the 
credulous penitent who knelt to whisper in their 
ear his confession, advertisements of indulgences 
at the doors of the churches, and the idolatrous 
worshipping of the host while carried through 
the streets as a viaticum to the dying ; first 
changed all my dreams of the dark ages into 
present realities, and showed me that I had got 
to fight over again, with the absurdities of 
popery, the battles of the Reformation. The 
involuntary dread, too, with which I shrunk 
from my first contact with the antichristian 
haughtiness of the turbaned Turk, as I landed 
in Egypt, a single-handed missionary, aiming to 
undermine the faith he adores, is distinctly re- 
called. And the near view of death presented 
by the plague, as I was first surrounded by it, 
and shut myself up from stranger and friend, 
fearing contagion in every touch, comes up 
afresh. 

But what were first impressions once, have 
lost their novelty ; and many of the anxieties 
they occasioned, have been entirely removed, or 



187 

essentially modified, by experience. Four times 
has Providence mercifully preserved me from 
the plague, while it was harrying away its vic- 
tims around ; i a thousand have fallen at my 
side and ten thousand at my right hand' from 
the cholera, and it has not been suffered to touch 
me ; and when nigh unto death in a Persian 
stable, have friends been raised up to nurse and 
heal me. I have seen the wrath of the Turk 
restrained, when provoked by the destruction of 
his navy, and the approach of a conquering 
enemy to his capital; no serious molestation has 
been offered me while travelling thousands of 
miles in his territories ; 2nd even the predatory 
hand of the barbarous ZCiird has not touched me. 
By observation and repeated argument, the open 
abominations and subtle wiles of papacy have 
become familiar. And after being preserved 
through a dozen voyages, I am mercifully re- 
turned to my country and friends. 

I can never revisit those scenes, with the 
feelings I had at first entering them. Instead 
of imagined and imaginary trials, I now know, 
to a considerable extent, what to expect. Per- 
mit me, brethren, so far as I am able, to transfer 
from my own mind to yours, some of the results 
of my experience. 

The trials in regard to the necessaries of life, 



188 

of which friends at home often think and speak 
most, you will probably regard least of all. 
Called, you often will be, especially in travelling, 
to eat, and clothe, and lodge badly ; but still 
greater mental and moral privations will make 
you regard as trifles such as are merely bodily. 
The sight, too, of the numerous poor around 
you, eating their scanty meals of bread and oil, 
or filling their bellies with the pods of the 
kharoob tree, perhaps the very husks the prodi- 
gal son grudged the swine, and giving, by con- 
trast, an appearance of comfort to every form of 
poverty you had se«n before, will make you 
grateful, that, at the w^rst, you are enabled to 
fare better than they, and dispose you to forget 
your own wants in compasdon for those whom 
you go to benefit. And you will remember 
your great Lord and Master, who. in his errand 
of mercy to our world, had not where to lay his 
head, and be ashamed to complain. Above all 
men, the missionary is called to apply to himself 
our Saviour's injunction to his disciples, " Take 
no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or 
what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what 
ye shall put on," 

Among the trials which you will feel to be 
serious, I would mention, first, the trial, or per-i 
haps I shoujd say disappointment, of your clas- 



189 

sical and sacred associations. It is delightful to 
read the journals, or to listen to the narratives, 
of one who has surveyed the mountains and 
plains of Greece from the castle of Corinth, has 
examined the perfection of ancient art in the 
parthenon at Athens, has become familiar with 
the glory of Lebanon and the excellency of 
Carmel and Sharon, and has stood upon mount 
Olivet, or at the foot of mount Ararat. It is 
also interesting to anticipate going in person to 
such celebrated spots. And still more satis- 
factory is the reflection of having actually visited 
them. But the experience of really living and 
travelling there, is not, to the missionary, a cup 
of such unmixed gratification. — I say, to the 
missionary , because, in this and the other trials 
I shall mention, others can but very imperfectly 
sympathize with him. The traveller goes to 
look with the eye of an antiquarian or of a poet 
upon the relics of ancient art and, power ; or 
with that of a philosopher and a politician upon 
present exhibitions of character and of govern- 
ment. And if he lodges among poverty and 
filth in the ruins of Thebes or Baalbek ; or is 
abused, hindered, and crossed in his purposes, 
by venial Turkish governors, and lying, faithless 
guides and muleteers; he is, indeed, discom- 
moded, and vexed to the quick; but still the 



190 

one serves materially, by way of contrast, to 
elevate his conceptions of the grandeur of an- 
cient times, and the other teaches him constantly 
new and valuable lessons of the very informa- 
tion he is travelling to acquire. And he has 
neither the expectation of a continued residence 
among such people, nor any fixed desire for 
their happiness, to make their degradation 
weigh permanently upon his spirits. — Not so 
with you, as missionaries. You go not to study 
ancient Greece and Palestine, nor the present 
workings of human nature ; any farther than you 
will ever have an occasional regard to the one 
for the illustration of Scripture, and will find an 
understanding of the other an essential help to 
your missionary success. You go to reform and 
save the degenerate and perishing people who 
now dwell there ; and your tour is for life. If 
this object be foremost, as it ought to be, in your 
minds and hearts, and you are led, when lodg- 
ing in a hut, the companion of filth and vermin, 
or daily cheated and belied by servants and false 
friends, sometimes to reflect upon the discour- 
agements and disconsolateness of your work ; 
what comfort, think you, will come from the 
idea, that you are on the spot where Socrates 
argued, or Paul preached ? The very light, that 
will break in through such a reflection, will 



191 

only make you see more clearly the foul features 
of the moral degradation around you, and feel 
more sensibly the extent of the labor you pro- 
pose to accomplish. In a word, the misery of 
present scenes will diminish, and perhaps ulti- 
mately destroy the charms of classical and sacred 
associations. And, if your experience be like 
mine, the nearer you approach to Jerusalem, the 
less will be your desire to visit it ; from the ex- 
pectation of more pain from views of its present 
wickedness, than of pleasure from reflections 
upon its ancient glory. 

Second : Your constitutions will be tried. 
Your fear of sudden death from the plague, will 
indeed be diminished, when you find that a per- 
fect quarantine, or avoiding the touch of whatever 
has the contagion, will give you security in the 
midst of it. And you will find few places very 
subject to serious endemical diseases. The cli- 
mate of the Mediterranean is not a bad one for 
that latitude. But it is still a southern climate. 
Three or four months of continued heat y with 
hardly a change of temperature which we should 
notice at home, and five or six months of 
drought, uninterrupted by a single shower, ne- 
cessarily relax a constitution formed amid the 
invigorating changes and refreshing showers of 



192 

our northern latitude. The nerves are then 
laid open to the withering action of the scirocco 
wind, which you will encounter every where, 
and they become a thermometer, exquisitely 
sensitive to every varying breeze. More and 
more sensitive they become, too, as the process 
of enervation proceeds, to all the other trials of 
your missionary life. The spiritual blindness 
and obstinacy of those whom you would en- 
lighten and convert, affects them. The uni- 
versal falsehood of those with whom you deal, 
tries them. All the little inconveniences of 
food and lodging, too, then come to be felt, and 
prey upon them. The springs of animal life are 
gradually worn out, and the unnerved consti- 
tution falls an easy prey to disease, or sinks 
under premature old age. I speak not incon- 
siderately. It is my settled conviction that 
enfeebled health and shortened life are among 
the sacrifices necessary to the work of missions. 
They are an integral part of the expense to be 
reckoned in counting the cost of the conversion 
of the world. But, who that has a just sense of 
the value of souls and of the vanity of life, will 
shrink from them ? Because the work cannot 
be done without them, shall it be left undone, 
the world be suffered to continue in ruin, and 
the Saviour's command remain unobeyed ? 



193 

Third : Your courage will be tried. Not, 
indeed, the courage requisite to face an enemy 
in combat, or death on the scaffold. The 
Turks are so kept in check by fear of the 
power and vengeance of Christian nations, that, 
where you go, your life will rarely, if ever, be 
endangered by their wrath. Your American 
citizenship will avail you as much as Paul's 
citizenship of Rome did him. It is your moral 
courage that will be tested. To preach the 
gospel at home, whether to congregations or to 
individuals, requires indeed a resolution that 
shall break through diffidence ; but no great 
degree of positive courage, for the sentiments of 
the community are with you. But transfer 
yourself to a land of Mohammedans and papists, 
by one of whom your religion is despised, and 
by the other is hated ; a land, too, where deli- 
cate sensibilities are not regarded, but each one, 
tumbled and jostled by the rough handling of 
the heartless and the passionate from earliest 
youth, becomes as little sensitive to the treat- 
ment of another as the mule is to the lash of his 
master, and none is expected to feel short of a 
sound blow : stand up there to proclaim all out 
of the way, and to exhort them to renounce 
their hereditary veneration for the Koran and 
councils, and all the thousand dogmas and 
17 



194 

ceremonies that hinge upon them ; and receive 
the rough treatment to which they are ac- 
customed, made rougher in proportion as you 
cross the current of public opinion and practice. 
Then will your moral courage be tried ; and if 
it stand not the test, you will shrink back within 
yourself, and your influence as a missionary will 
be a cypher. 

Fourth : Your temper will be tried. In your 
dealings with men, you will find them swayed 
by a selfishness so gross, as to overstep the 
bounds of honesty and of honor, within which it 
is commonly restrained among us. In its work- 
ings, man overreaches man to the best of his 
ability, and each, in managing his individual 
interests, acquires, in his little sphere, a diplo- 
matic adroitness at intrigue, double-dealing, and 
deceit, not very unlike his, who has grown grey 
in the cabinet, managing the balance of power 
between neighboring nations. Your servant will 
hire shop-keepers and market-men to abet him 
in overcharging in his purchases, by dividing 
with them his dishonest gain ; and then seek 
by cringing and falsehood to put your suspicions 
to rest. Your entertainer in travelling will 
serve you up more flattering speeches than nu- 
tritious dishes ; and then charge you in pro- 



195 

portion to the former, rather than the latter. 
So crookedly, in fact, are their minds formed, 
that a falsehood will often come out as the 
readiest answer to a simple inquiry, when not 
the shadow of a motive appears for concealing 
the truth. Their own method of settling their 
matters is, to meet cheating with cheating and 
lie with lie ; and then, by furious altercation 
and wrangling, work themselves to a mutual 
adjustment. Like as the inequalities of two 
flints are knocked off by collision ; and in the 
one case as in the other, the more fire is elicited 
in the process, the more perfect, generally, is 
the agreement in the end. Your way will be, 
to determine within yourself what is right, and 
then do it, regardless alike of their arguments, 
their smiles, and their threats. But who can 
steer this straight course through such vortices 
of falsehood and passion, and not have his 
temper warped, and be provoked to lift his 
voice and give utterance to his indignation 1 
The occasions will occur daily, and if you yield 
to them, a touchy, impatient, dictatorial spirit, 
the reverse of evangelical meekness, will be the 
inevitable consequence. Such experience long 
continued will tend to render you suspicious of 
all men ; and you wall look upon all the world 
through the distorting medium of a sour misan* 



196 

thropy. I may seem to exaggerate the effects 
of little causes. Bat their very littleness, by 
enabling them to touch you in the bosom of 
your families, and in your every-day business, 
makes them the more irritating. And you must 
not be disappointed to find this far from being 
the least of your missionary trials. 

Fifth : Your wisdom will be tried, To trace 
out even all the parts and bearings of papacy 
and the kindred religions, as theoretical systems 
of theology, requires thought and discrimination. 
But, in the shape which it gives to the minds of 
its professors, does the cunning of " the master- 
piece of the prince of darkness" chiefly appear. 
And to adapt the means of conviction to such 
minds, calls for consummate wisdom. Without 
it, you may imagine yourselves wielding the 
most pungent arguments, when in fact every 
one strikes a spot shielded with adamant, and 
falls pointless to the ground. For papacy has 
left so few places undefended, that they are not 
to be hit by a random shot. They must be 
searched for and aimed at before the wound will 
be inflicted. Would you know where to touch 
the heart and conscience that they may feel ? 
Wise experiment must teach you where they 
have not been hardened and blinded. Would 



197 

you give the truth a shape that shall meet their 
exigency ? You must study practically from 
observation, as well as theoretically from books, 
the highly artificial attitude in which their false 
religion has placed them. Your chief mission- 
ary business, in a word, of conveying truth to 
the minds of men, will be a constant test of 
your practical wisdom. — Your wisdom will be 
tried, too, in the common dealings of life. Men 
are not brought up in such a school of in- 
trigue, as is the state of society in that part of 
the world, for nothing. A man's words being no 
index to his feelings or his intentions, they are 
forced to judge from other more unequivocal but 
less palpable symbols ; and thus they become 
acute discerners of character. The missionary's 
character is soon studied; and before he is 
aware, they have fathomed it, and found what 
they can, and what they cannot do with him. 
And if, in the trial, his common sense, the best 
of all worldly wisdom, he found wanting, he 
will be made the constant butt of their wily 
schemes, 

Sixth: Your piety will he tried; in various 
respects. Its activity will be assayed, With 
how many stimulants, arising from close contact 
with brilliant examples, the thrilling sight and 

17* 



198 

reports of revivals of religion, and a spirit of 
restless enterprise and competition pervading a 
whole community, have you been goaded on 
here from every quarter to run well the race of 
Christian zeal? These extraneous excitements 
will soon, in a great measure, cease to be felt ; 
and your piety will be thrown upon its own 
internal springs of action to move it onward in 
its course of labor. Is there no danger that it 
will be found defective in the trial, and will 
leave you to flag, and stop, and settle down into 
the apathy and indolence of the dead mass of 
mind that will surround you ? — Its benevolence 
will be tested. The great proof of our Saviour's 
benevolence was its unmoved endurance of in- 
gratitude, scorn and injury from those who were 
its objects. Similarly will yours be tried. The 
missionary goes not to the pleasant work of 
doing good to them who do good to him, and 
who deserve his esteem. Men, who daily cheat, 
curse and malign him, and in whom he can 
detect, perhaps, scarcely one estimable quality, 
are the characters for whose benefit he is to 
wear out his life. And absolutely essential to 
his usefulness is it, that his love to their souls 
have strength to overrule all the risings of prov- 
ocation at their abuse, and of contempt at their 
meanness ; and that, instead of suffering him to 



199 

regard and treat them with the abhorrence their 
conduct deserves, it inspires him with increased 
compassion at every new exhibition of their tur- 
pitude. May your piety, brethren, prove, in the 
trial, to be of this heavenly stamp ; and though 
injured, may you pity still, and still strive to 
save ! — Its very stability will be closely assailed. 
How many supports has it hitherto had, from 
the stated ordinances of the house of God, from 
the social meeting for conference and prayer, 
from the interchange of experience and sympa- 
thies with Christian friends, from Sabbaths kept 
so strictly that all the circumstances of their 
return carry away your thoughts as on a current 
almost involuntarily to spiritual things, and from 
the floating opinions and feelings of a great 
religious community surrounding you as an 
atmosphere to be constantly inhaled for the ren- 
ovation of the feelings that circulate in your 
heart 1 All these props are about to be knocked 
away, and your piety to be exposed to the serious 
trial of its ability to stand stable with little to 
lean upon, beside the immediate grace of God. 
To many oppressive weights, also, will it be sub- 
jected. Sabbaths profaned by labor or frivolous 
amusement in those whom you see, and by 
entire worldliness of mind in those with whom 
you converse, will tend to distract its spiritual- 



200 

ity. Constant familiarity with moral corruption, 
brought nigh by the conduct of those with whom 
you have to do, and, by its very touch, almost 
contaminating your heart and giving callousness 
to you conscience, will tend to adulterate its 
holiness. To its other burdens, the prince of 
darkness will add the weight of his influence. 
The existence and influence of Satan is no 
Jewish fable. In his wide dominion, he has his 
more and his less loyal provinces. The mission- 
ary goes to raise the standard of revolt where he 
reigns lord paramount of all. And can he 
expect to encounter no more than his ordinary 
stratagems and assaults? I am not dealing in 
figures for the sake of impression. I seriously 
believe you will have to contend with more of 
Satan's wiles in your own personal experience, 
than if you remained here, where his supremacy 
has been partially renounced. Under all these 
trials of its stability, brethren, may your piety 
prove not to be a parasitic plant, that shall droop 
and fall ! But, rooted in the soil of a regenerate 
heart, and watered by showers of divine grace, 
may it, like a stable oak, stand unbent by 
them all ! 

Finally: Your faith will be tried. The 
devout Martyn, in anticipation of the missionary 



201 

life, said, " In seasons of unbelief, nothing 
seems to lie before me but one vast uninteresting 
wilderness, and heaven appearing but dimly at 
the end." Similar feelings will your circum- 
stances often occasion you. When removed 
from so many of the present sources of religious 
enjoyment, your resort will be to the anticipation 
by faith of the enjoyments of heaven. If your 
faith prove weak, your goal will be dim, and 
your course dark. But if it be like that of the 
patriarch, who, while he lived as a pilgrim and 
a stranger, looked for a city that hath founda- 
tions whose builder and maker is God, your 
hopes will be bright, and your path as the shin- 
ing light that shineth more and more unto the 
perfect day. — Your work will add to the trial of 
your faith. Here there is so much of sight in 
the encouragements of a preacher of the gospel, 
that he is liable to forget to call in the aid of 
faith. While he ploughs and sows, he sees the 
showers descend, and the seed spring up and 
bear fruit, with so much regularity as to be 
tempted to regard the process with feelings dif- 
fering little from those of the husbandman, when 
he looks upon the progress of his yearly crops. 
But you go to a dry and thirsty land, where no 
showers have descended for centuries ; and as 
you clear away the rocks, and sow the seed, not 



202 

a little faith is required to expect that the heavens 
will again be opened to water it, and to make it 
bring forth fruit in its season. To look with 
confidence to the means you will use for the 
conversion of men, ignorant of every image of 
piety, brought up in the full belief of ingenious 
and captivating error, and corrupted in con- 
science and in heart, till the one ceases to 
recognize the truth and the other to brook 
control, is the height of faith in God. Men of 
the world have it not ; they stand not this trial 
of the missionary, and at once give up the work 
as hopeless. But to the eye of that, which is 
"the evidence of things not seen," it is not 
hopeless ; for it discerns, applied to the simple 
machinery, the power of the Hand that moves 
the world. Such, we trust, brethren, will your 
faith prove to be, making you ever regard, with 
unshaken confidence, the promise of God to 
stand as sure in Asia as in America. And 
while you labor in the regions once evangelized 
by Paul, you will look as steadfastly as he did, 
not to miracles, nor to wisdom, but to the foolish- 
ness of preaching the cross of Christ, for the 
salvation of them that believe. 

Having added up so many items of the cost, I 
ought now to estimate also the value of the prize. 
In other words, to this enumeration of your trials 



203 

I ought to add, for a counterpoise, a view of 
your pleasures and prospects. But I have not 
time to enlarge. 

Your satisfaction will be unalloyed and en- 
nobling, in feeling that you have thrown your- 
selves into a position perfectly congruous to all 
your true relations to time and eternity ; by 
selecting an employment, that sinks to their 
deserved rank of trifles the affairs of the body 
and of time, by neglecting them ; and exalts to 
their proper magnitude the affairs of the soul 
and of eternity, by looking to them for its objects 
and its pleasures. — Sublime is the feeling and 
glorious the prospect of enlisting as officers in 
the great army that is to complete what the 
Saviour bled on the cross and now sits upon the 
throne of the universe to accomplish, the subjec- 
tion of the whole world to his will. You go 
indeed to a post of labor and fatigue ; and, as 
you besiege the citadels of the beast and of the 
false prophet, whose conquest is to complete the 
triumph of the Lamb, the struggle may be hard 
and long. But, when crowned with the laurels 
of victory, how trifling will all your present 
trials appear! — Unspeakable will be your pleas- 
ure, leaving, as you do, this fold guarded by so 
many faithful shepherds, and going to gather 
the sheep that are scattered upon the mountains, 



204 

when you succeed in bringing back one and 
another that was lost, and participate in the joy 
of the angels of God at his recovery. — The 
consolations of divine grace, too, if you continue 
faithful, will be meeted out to you according to 
your day, and you will find them neither few nor 
small. 

And, my Christian friends of this congrega- 
tion, may I not add, among other pleasures 
of missionaries, sympathy, encouragement and 
prayers from the churches at home ? You surely 
will not chill their hearts by the ungenerous 
insinuation, that when they beg the means to be 
sent abroad they are pleading for personal favors. 
For to whom can it be a personal favor, to be 
banished from the comforts of home and the 
privileges of our favored land, and to wear out 
life in the midst of such, and unnumbered other 
similar trials ? Nor will you, (may I not 
say ?) wait for them to write or come home to 
stir up your interest and your zeal in their cause. 
This order of things ought to be reversed. You 
are at the centre, the heart of the system of 
evangelical action ; missionaries at the distant 
extremities. From you the current of life should 
be propelled warm and rapid ; from them it can 
be expected to return only at a cold and languid 
rate. You ought to take them by the hand and 



205 

lead them onward, imparting to them renewed 
portions of your zeal and faith. 

These brethren will find others in the field, 
who, years ago, went out from you, and have 
since been bearing the burden and heat of the 
day. Might I speak of my own recollections, I 
would tell you how often I have taken sweet 
counsel with them. But you yourselves know 
their worth. Let the vessel now about to leave, 
go freighted with your warmest sympathies and 
your sincerest prayers for them, as well as for 
those who will sail in her. 

I need not add, dear brethren now about to 
depart, an expression of my own fullest sympa- 
thy in the trials and the prospects of yourselves 
and of them. I hope soon to join you, and, 
by spending and being spent with you, share, 
not only in your feelings, but in your labors. 



18 



ADDRESS II. 



PRESENT ATTITUDE OF MOHAMMEDANISM, IN 

REFERENCE TO THE SPREAD OF THE 

GOSPEL* 



Were it possible, I would gladly bring to 
remembrance and set before this audience, all 
the countries and the mingled people I have sur- 
veyed in Western Asia. But to wander at ran- 
dom over so wide a field, in the short time that 
is allowed me, would but confuse your concep- 
tions, and leave upon your mind no distinct im- 
pression. We must fix upon some one distinct 
object of observation. I have thought of none 
that would be more interesting or useful than 
The present attitude of Mohammedanism in re- 
ference to the spread of the gospel. 

* Delivered at the meeting held by the American Board of Com- 
missioners for Foreign Missions, in the Chatham Street Chapel, New 
York, May 10th, 1833. 



207 

Mohammedanism has its seat in Turkey, 
where it has been my lot to labor and journey. 
Heretofore it has raised there a haughty front 
against the religion of Jesus. Its laws have 
ever imposed tribute, or the forfeiture of life, 
upon unbelievers, and denounced inevitable 
death upon apostates. Its professors have long 
held at the disposal of their arbitrary will, large 
bodies of subjugated Christians; they once 
triumphed over the chivalry of Europe ; and 
their sovereigns have for centuries sat upon the 
subverted throne of the Caesars. Its doctrines 
and its history, in a word, have long placed Mo- 
hammedanism in a high attitude of contempt 
toward the gospel, and of opposition to the 
spread of it, both among Mohammedans, and 
among nominal Christians subject to Moham- 
medans. 

Allow me to dwell a moment upon this past 
attitude of Mohammedanism, before I speak of 
that which it is now assuming. 

In reference to the propagation of Christian- 
ity among Mohammedans, its opposition has held 
the form of laiv — of law strictly executed. In 
Egypt even, where some of the institutions of 
Europe have been for several years professedly 
imitated, when I first arrived there an instance 
of its execution occurred. A Mohammedan 



208 

woman was discovered to have connected her- 
self with the Greek church ; a proof of her new 
faith was found in a cross stamped indelibly 
upon her arm ; she was seized, carried to the 
Nile, and sunk in its waters. It has, in fact, 
long been the boast of the semi-independent in- 
habitants of Lebanon, that their mountain is the 
only spot in Turkey, where a Mohammedan can 
with impunity renounce his religion. 

The law, or at least the execution of law, 
went farther than to punish Moslems who apos- 
tatized ; it punished Christians who dared de- 
fame Mohammed. When at Alexandria, I was 
informed of a poor Christian, who had been in- 
stigated by some sudden provocation in the ba- 
zar to curse Mohammed. He was instantly 
seized ; and it was only by embracing Moham- 
medanism, that he saved his life. No Chris- 
tian in Turkey dare, in the presence of Moham- 
medans, curse the false prophet. They would 
be glad to do it, such is their hatred of his fol- 
lowers ; and they are ready to mention it as one 
of their grievances, that they are denied the 
privilege. — 31issionaries wish not to curse Mo- 
hammed. They wish, by sober and convincing 
argument, to prove that he is a false prophet. 
But the two stand, in the estimation of Moham- 
medans, not far asunder. An effort was made 



209 

to convince me, when I first entered Turkey, 
that by openly arguing against Mohammedanism, 
a missionary would so trample upon the laws of 
the land as to forfeit his European protection, 
and expose himself without refuge to Moslem 
vengeance. I did not then believe it, and have 
never since found it true. But any direct at- 
tempt to proselyte Mohammedans to Christianity 
has ever been regarded as a high offence. A 
German missionary, under the protection of the 
Russian army during its late invasion of Turkey, 
undertook to reason with the Turks, in the ba- 
zars and streets of Erzroom, against Moham- 
medanism and in favor of Christianity. Only a 
few days elapsed, before the Icady and the mufty 
informed the general, that, such was the popu- 
lar displeasure at the missionary, they could not 
hold themselves responsible for his life. 

In reference to the spread of the gospel among 
the nominal Christians of Turkey, the opposi- 
tion of Mohammedanism has held, not so much 
the form of established law, as of arbitrary op- 
pression. When a Christian has paid his capita- 
tion and other taxes, the Moslem government 
professed to regard with indifference the particu- 
lar religious dogmas he might adopt, or the 
ecclesiastical connection in which he might 
place himself. From considerations of state 
18* 



210 

convenience, it held indeed the ecclesiastical 
head of every sect responsible in some respects 
for all in his communion ; and of course was 
ready to aid, by the civil power, in supporting 
his authority. Still, it remained for such digni- 
taries themselves to move the first complaint 
against measures leading to dissent or reforma- 
tion. If they remained quiet, foreign mission- 
aries might put the Bible in every Christian's 
house, and, with aid from above, implant the 
seeds of grace in every Christian's heart in 
Turkey ; and find no Mohammedan law crossing 
their movements. And at the worst, the law 
could not touch their life, or their liberty. 

But in Turkey law is one thing, and the mea- 
sures actually taken by rulers is often quite 
another thing. The haughty attitude toward 
Christianity, given to the Turks by their reli- 
gion and their history, has often led them to 
trample arbitrarily upon the rights of even Euro- 
peans. Missionaries, the appointed agents of the 
despised religion, have been not a little obnox- 
ious to such acts of oppression. I have travelled 
over regions, where the missionaries of Home, 
though enjoying the patronage of ambassadors, 
have been imprisoned, bastinadoed and banished, 
in endeavoring to propagate their faith among 
the nominal Christians of Turkey. How many 



211 

thousands of dollars have been arbitrarily ex- 
acted from their establishments in Palestine and 
elsewhere, their accounts alone can tell. I trust, 
too, it is not forgotten, that- our own Fisk and 
Bird were once imprisoned in Jerusalem. In- 
deed, who of us does not remember, when the 
Turkish power was regarded as presenting such 
hindrances to missionary operations, that our 
first efforts in Palestine were undertaken with 
much fear and trembling. — Such was formerly 
the opposition of Mohammedanism to the spread 
of the gospel among Mohammedans, and among 
nominal Christians subject to Mohammedans. 

In passing to speak of its present attitude, I 
am not able to tell you, that the anti-christian 
articles of its code of laws have been repealed. 
The changes that have actually taken place in 
its general posture are two ; one tending to 
liberalize, the other to humble, its professors. 
For the first time, probably, in its history, have 
innovations been formally introduced from Chris- 
tian nations, as acknowledged improvements. 
Before, a wall of arrogance, cutting off the view 
of foreign superiority, hedged up Moslems to the 
contemplation of their own conceited exaltation. 
Be it that the innovations are military, and in 
themselves of no moral value, they make a 
breach in this wall ; and in their train may come 



212 

in others, of a far different nature. They are 
an acknowledgment, that some good things may 
be borrowed from Christians, and their tendency 
is to liberalize the minds of Moslems for the ad- 
mission of others more important. 

Moslems have been humbled by the experience 
both of their intrinsic, and of their relative 
weakness. The authority of the sultan over his 
subjects formerly rested upon a double basis ; 
his ecclesiastical character, as head of the 
Moslem church, and his civil character, as head 
of the Turkish empire. The former acquired 
him the greatest veneration, and the most hearty 
obedience. His orders issued in that capacity 
for the head of an obnoxious pasha, had but to 
be displayed in the court of the victim, and the 
very officers of that court would aid in its exe- 
cution. By his recent adoption of Christian 
improvements, he has severed this hold upon the 
veneration of his subjects. Some even scruple 
not to call him an infidel. To that religious 
fanaticism, in a word, which has ever been the 
strongest principle of obedience in the Turkish 
citizen, and of bravery in the Turkish soldier, 
he can no longer appeal, What a failure was 
his late attempt, by unfurling the sacred sanjak 
el shereef during the Russian war ! Once he 
had but to impose the ban of empire upon the 



213 

famous Ali Pasha of Yoannina, whose court 
even figured in the diplomacy of Europe during 
the war of the revolution, and the head of the 
outlaw soon graced the portals of the serag io. 
Now the same interdict is issued against Mo- 
hammed Ali of Egypt, and his victorious army 
only march the bolder toward the walls of the 
capital. — Of the relative weakness of their 
power, the Turks have recently had more than 
one imperative lesson. The battle of Navarino, 
destroying their navy, and in its consequences 
dismembering Greece from their empire, was 
one. Another was the Russian war, which in 
its progress placed their capital at the mercy of 
a conquering enemy, and at its close drained the 
resources of their treasury. I have studied the 
Turkish character, and if it has one distinctive 
trait, it is that of humbling itself under the rod. 
This experience, therefore, of intrinsic and rel- 
ative weakness could not but act as an effective 
antidote to that arrogance, which has entered so 
essentially into the opposition of Mohammedan- 
ism to Christianity. 

What alterations, now, have these changes in 
the general posture of Mohammedanism, made 
in its particular attitude toward the spread of 
the gospel ? To the spread of it among Mos- 
lems even, opposition is wearing a milder aspect. 



214 

That Moslems are yet reduced in their own 
estimation near enough to a level with other 
sects, to listen patiently to arguments from 
native Christians, upon the falsity of their faith, 
is not even now true. But to Europeans is at 
length assigned, in Moslem estimation, a relative 
standing, which begins to command for mission- 
aries liberty to argue against Mohammedanism. 
From Egypt, where the attempt was once made to 
convince me that openly to charge Mohammed 
with imposture would endanger my life, reports 
reach us of repeated discussions between mission- 
aries and Moslems. From Damascus, the very 
seat of Moslem bigotry and arrogance, — where, 
when I knew it, a European must wear the 
costume of an Osmanly rayah, or be liable to be 
mobbed ; and where, since then, two travellers 
at one time found popular rage against Europe- 
ans so high, as to be forced to conceal themselves, 
until they were sent away with a guard of thirty 
horsemen, — from Damascus even, we hear that 
an effectual door is opening for the circulation 
of the Scriptures. At Sidon, too, the gospel has 
been freely published to Mohammedans. Not 
many years ago, the wife and children of a leading 
Christian of that place, with whom I have been 
acquainted, leaving home one morning as if to 
attend church, went before the governor, and re- 



215 

nouncing their faith, returned Moslems. That 
hour made the man a widower, and child- 
less. The mother was no longer his wife, nor 
were the children his ; for no such relations 
could subsist between a Christian and Moslems. 
His property even, was no longer his own ; an 
officer accompanied them from the governor to 
enforce their claims to it. And he had not the 
right of complaining. In this very Sidon, I say, 
has free discussion with Moslems been recently 
carried on for months, by Wortabet, himself a 
native Christian, though under European pro- 
tection. 

Such changes are great, they are astonishing. 
But I impose upon myself a caution not to build 
upon them too high expectations. How general 
and how deep they may be, I wait for time to 
determine. To bring Moslems to tolerate dis- 
cussion of the merits of their faith, is one thing ; 
to bring them to tolerate apostacy from it, is 
another. Humbled as the Moslem's spirit is, 
that he can bear to hear his religion called in 
question by a missionary ; let a missionary bap- 
tize a Moslem convert, and the law against 
apostates, may be found to be not yet, even 
virtually repealed. This change is to be hoped 
for from the liberalizing process which is be- 
ginning in the Moslem character. May we not 



216 

look for a public opinion to result from the inno- 
vations already making such inroads upon 
Turkish prejudices, which shall cause the in- 
tolerant law of the Koran to become a dead 
letter, and hold men no longer accountable for 
changing their religion, to any other tribunal 
than to that of conscience and of God ? Such 
a state of public opinion, it is believed, is be- 
ginning to be formed. The causes which are 
to produce it, have been the longest in operation 
in Egypt. And to their effect doubtless, in part, 
is to be ascribed the tolerance of religious dis- 
cussion under that government already alluded 
to. The extension of Egyptian rule over Syria 
has undoubtedly given these increased facilities 
for missionary operations. In Constantinople, 
too, the capital of Mohammedanism, similar 
appearances are beginning to be observed. A 
feeling is commonly remarked there among the 
Turks, that with their imitation of European 
dress and military tactics, it behooves them to put 
on something more of the European character. 
When I was last at the depository of the British 
and Foreign Bible Society at that city, a gentle- 
man was sitting, as I entered, attentively exam- 
ining the Scriptures. At length he arose, and 
purchased a copy in Turkish and another in 
Arabic. It was not until then, so much of the 



217 

aspect of a European had he in his dress and 
appearance, that I perceived him to be a Turk. 
He was no stranger there. He had already been 
accessory to the distribution of a considerable 
number of Bibles. And the keeper of the de- 
pository informed me, that this was not the only 
Turk, that felt that while other things were 
borrowed from Europeans, it was important also 
to look at their religion. 

In listening to my reasoning, has the question 
occurred to you, whether I am not building too 
much upon mere political events 1 Such a ques- 
tion is answered by what I am now ready to 
say. For the conversion of Mohammedans, two 
distinct steps have been requisite. A door of en- 
trance among them needed to be opened ; and 
that door needed to be actually entered by mis- 
sionary laborers. The former step lay beyond 
the reach of direct religious means, in the 
sovereign control of Providence. I have traced 
out to you the interesting arrangements by 
which, in giving to Mohammedanism an attitude 
toward the spread of the gospel among Moslems, 
less haughty and less repulsive, Providence has 
been taking this step. He has done won- 
drously ; and we have thus far looked on. We 
must look on no longer. It is now our turn to 
work. The time may not yet have come for 
19 



218 

missions directly to the Mohammedans ; but we 
ought to have missionaries enough among the 
nominal Christians of Turkey, for some one to 
be ever at hand to throw the light of divine 
truth into the opening mind of every Moham- 
medan inquirer ; and to increase, by all de- 
sirable means, the number of such inquirers. 

If we take not some such measures, all this 
providential preparation will bring out no good 
result. Whatever of humbling and of liberal- 
izing all the political causes in the world can 
effect in the character of Mohammedans, will 
never make them Christians, nor good men. In 
this singularly interesting attitude, this transition- 
state, into which the Moslem mind is now brought, 
the impulse of some positive Christian agency 
is needed, or it will not even remain where it 
is ; it will grow worse. I have no faith in 
reformations left in such hands as this now is 
in. The agents of Christ may stand aloof; but 
the agents of the devil will not. They are 
always at hand. It is now a study of many in 
Turkey, to accustom Moslems to balls, masquer- 
ades, and wir?e-bibbing, things formerly held in 
utter abomination. And in this they are suc- 
ceeding. For, to imitate Europeans, is now 
becoming common, and such, I am sorry to say, 
are the specimens of Europe heretofore seen by 



219 

Moslems, that to fall into practices like these, is 
in their estimation to be a European.* — Can 
Christians fold their hands, and suffer such a 
golden harvest to be wholly reaped by the 
enemy ? When shall the disciples of Christ 
come to have an activity in their Master's 
service, by which they shall anticipate the 
emissaries of Satan, and suffer them no longer 
to pre-occupy opening fields of usefulness ! 
Shall it never be, until Satan is bound his 
thousand years, and Christians can take their 
own sluggish course without competition 1 

In reference to the spread of the gospel among 
the nominal Christians of Turkey, the opposition 
of Mohammedanism , it may be hoped, has en* 
tirely ceased. That those Christians themselves 
will call upon the civil power to suppress evan- 
gelical labors, (the only way in which opposition 
can assume a legal shape,) past experience gives 
us no reason to fear ; except so far as papists 
are concerned, and they in Turkey are com- 
paratively few. The arbitrary oppression, in 
which Moslem opposition formerly chiefly con- 
sisted, may be considered as wholly passed by. 
A derangement of public authority amounting 
to anarchy alone can bring it back. The Turk- 
ish government has lately received too many 
salutary lessons of civility, any longer wantonly 



220 

• 

to trample upon the rights of foreigners. Eu- 
ropean and American citizenship has now 
acquired sufficient respect, to secure even 
to the missionary his life and liberty, and the 
enjoyment of his civil rights ; and he can go 
wherever public law is respected, preach- 
ing the gospel to the numerous Christian sects 
of Turkey, with no Turkish ruler disposed to 
hinder or make him afraid in so doing. 

In referring this change to other than re- 
ligious causes, am I again accused of a pro- 
pensity to dwell upon political events ? If 
limited to the class of events actually alluded to, 
I plead guilty to the charge. Had the six 
eventful years, that I have mingled with Medi- 
terranean affairs where such events have so 
rapidly succeeded each other, found me in- 
dulging no such propensity, I should accuse 
myself of possessing the susceptibilities, neither 
of a Christian, nor of a man. Around me was 
the theatre in which had occurred the great 
transactions, that, from the remotest ages, have 
decided the destinies of our world ; there were 
to be developed the wonderful scenes of yet 
unfulfilled prophecy ; and the passing events of 
every day seemed to take a visible hold upon 
the fate of nations. What Christian, what man, 
could fail to open his eyes upon such a book of 



221 

providence spread out before him ? Is there a 
Christian that hears me, who did not stretch his 
eye across the Atlantic to watch the progress of 
the Russian arms, and whose very Christian 
feelings did not sharpen his vision ? I too 
looked at the same events from a nearer point, 
to see what God would bring out of them for the 
advancement of his kingdom. That he has 
actually brought much out of them, and of the 
other events that have recently befallen Turkey, 
I have already shown you. 

But how true is it, that God's ways are not 
as our ways ! Were not all of you disappointed 
that the Russian army did not march at once 
upon the capital, and annihilate by force the 
dominion of the successors of Mohammed ? 
Had it done so, the extension of Russian laws 
over Turkey, would have been to the nominal 
Christian sects there, like the congealing of 
lava upon Pompeii and Herculaneum, casing 
them up in their present condition, immovable 
by their own exertions, and intangible to mis- 
sionary efforts. Even missionaries to Moham- 
medans, would have found their hands tied, by 
the claims of an established church to their 
converts. God seems specially to have upheld 
the Mohammedan power, with just strength 
enough still to extend its levelling laws over 
19 * 



222 

Christian sects, to the prevention of any rising 
consciousness of their own power which would 
make them intolerant ; and with just weakness 
enough quietly to allow the labors of mission- 
aries among them, and expose its own professors 
to some evangelical influence. Indeed, who 
can say, that the destruction of Mohammedan 
power was not too high a prize to be awarded 
to Russian ambition, and that God has not re- 
served it for missionary enterprise to win, by 
converting Moslems to the faith of Jesus ? By 
turning those churches, which now by their 
ungodly conduct only prejudice Moslems against 
Christianity, into truly pious communities, each 
set as a city upon a hill that cannot be hid ; 
and in the mean time availing ourselves of 
every suitable opportunity to speak to Moslems 
themselves of Jesus and him crucified, even this 
great work may be effected. 

Among the native Christians, at any rate, in 
the present crisis of Mohammedanism, has Provi- 
dence opened a wide field for missionary culture 
in Turkey. Among them especially are mis- 
sionaries called for. How urgent is the call, I 
might show you, had I time, by portraying their 
wretched spiritual condition. But how should I 
draw the picture so as to convey faithfully to 
your minds the impression which extensive and 



223 

minute survey has stamped so indelibly upon 
mine 1 How should I make you feel the full ur- 
gency of the call I bring you ? 

During the six years of my missionary wan- 
derings and labors, I have had chiefly to do 
with men bearing the name of Christians. In 
Egypt, I have found the Copts ; in Palestine 
and Syria, Greek, papal Greek, and Maronite 
Arabs ; in Greece and its islands, in European 
Turkey, and in Asia Minor, Greeks, mostly of 
the Greek church ; in Armenia and elsewhere., 
Armenians ; and in the adjacent regions of 
Georgia and Persia, Georgians of the Greek, 
and Syrians of the Nestorian church. Their 
whole number is probably not far from six 
millions, a majority of whom are in the Turkish 
empire. They are relics of churches planted 
by apostles' hands ; churches unto whom were 
first given the oracles of God ; in which the 
candle of piety once burned brightly ; and from 
which emanated the light that now shines upon 
these ends of the earth. But in treading over 
again the tracks of the apostles and martyrs, I 
have sought in vain for an individual that now 
breathes the spirit of Jesus, unless he had bor- 
rowed it from a foreign source. 

The history of their degeneracy is briefly this. 
There having been among them from the first 



224 

no means of easily multiplying copies of the 
Scriptures, the Bible became at length too dear 
and scarce for many private individuals to pos- 
sess; and the people were dependent for their 
scriptural knowledge, upon the instructions of 
their clergy, and the reading of the word at 
church. The former source was soon corrupted, 
and ere long dried up. For the clergy, becom- 
ing secularized at heart, substituted in their 
teaching the speculations and traditions of men 
for the word of God, and at length preaching of 
whatever kind was entirely banished to give 
place to ' rites and forms.' Throughout the 
Greek nation now, a sermon is rarely heard 
except in Lent ; in Armenia we heard only one, 
and a pulpit we did not find in a single church. 
The reading of the word, too, soon became of 
no avail, for new forms of speech springing up, 
the ancient dialects grew obsolete, and the 
Scriptures came to be sealed up in a dead lan- 
guage. Such was also the case with their 
prayers. For centuries, they have not only 
listened to God's instructions, but have also wor- 
shipped him, in an unknown tongue. The only 
exceptions to this remark now, among all of 
whom I am speaking, are the few who use the 
Arabic language. 

They have become, in a word, a people with- 



225 

out the Bible. And what is it to be without the 
Bible ? Allow me to say, that, in this country, 
you know not what it is. Would you know, you 
must go yourselves and see. You must leave 
the intelligent preaching and devout prayers of 
your holy Sabbaths, with the blessed hopes of 
heaven they inspire. You must leave this 
healthful atmosphere of principled public opinion 
you breathe ; and the honor and honesty in the 
dealings of man with man around you ; with 
your enterprising trade and prosperous agricul- 
ture of which they are the soul. Your multi- 
plied schools and seminaries of learning, tot), 
with the boasted liberty of your republican in- 
stitutions, you must leave ; and go to those 
benighted people upon whom the Bible has 
ceased to shed its influence. See how, their 
religion becoming defective at the heart, they 
have, to satisfy conscience and quiet their fears, 
thrown around it the drapery of ceremonies, 
until all are now bowed down under a grievous 
bondage to external rights. Superstitious ob- 
servances being then set off to counterbalance 
their sins, see how conscience is perverted, and 
the foundations of moral principle and upright- 
ness are all out of course. See also, springing 
hence, the paralyzing influence of universal 
dishonesty upon every department of industry 



226 

and enterprise ; and how the fountains of know* 
ledge, too, being from the same influence no 
longer frequented, are choked up and disappear. 
Behold then Turkish despotism, standing upon 
this tripple basis of their dishonesty, sloth, and 
ignorance, riveting upon their necks its galling 
yoke. And finally, after a miserable life, wit- 
ness them passing by multitudes into a cheerless, 
hopeless eternity. 

In a word, accessible to the reach of your 
Christian benevolence there, are millions of 
men, sunk in ignorance and sin to a degree that 
makes the present salvation of any hopeless. 
Though bearing the same holy name by which 
you are called, and inhabiting places consecrated 
by apostles' feet, they are still so degenerate 
that " the name of God is blasphemed among 
the gentiles through them," and Moslems con- 
firmed in the errors of the false prophet. The 
Christianity they profess has lost the essential 
principles of the gospel ; its beneficial influence 
has ceased ; it is despised and oppressed. Need 
you an array of argument, and power of eloquence 
to make you listen to their call upon your Chris- 
tian sensibilities ? 

There was a time when a call from thence 
was heard by awakened Christendom. News 
was brought that the Holy Land was trampled 



227 

under the foot of infidels, its sacred places pro- 
faned, and their devotees abused ; and Europe 
poured forth hundreds of thousands of warrior s, 
spent millions of money, and shed torrents of 
blood. In my ardent desire that the call I bring 
you may be heard, I was about to wish myself 
Peter the Hermit, standing in some market 
place in France or Italy, and this audience one 
of the chivalrous assemblages that listened to 
him. Were we indeed enacting that scene of 
the dark ages, not an ear that hears me would 
not listen with absorbing attention, nor a heart 
here that would not swell with the high wrought 
purpose of immediate action ; and our country 
would be soon pouring forth her fleets and her 
armies to the conquest of Palestine. But I am 
not a pilgrim monk, reporting the profanation 
of sacred places ; nor are you a collection of 
feudal knights inspired only by papal superstition. 
I am a Christian missionary, come to bring you 
word, that in the vale of Egypt, among the deso- 
lations of Palestine, on the plains of Greece, in 
the mountains of Armenia, and wherever my 
feet have carried me, the souls of men, your 
brethren by blood and by name, are perishing. 
You are an assemblage of believers in Christ, 
professing to partake of that benevolence to souls 
which brought him from a throne in glory to a 



228 

cross on Calvary. And shall the message 
vibrate in your hearts a less thrilling chord of 
sympathy, and wake up a less effective zeal, than 
was felt by bigoted crusaders ? Is a mere hand- 
fid of missionaries all that enlightened Christian 
benevolence can send forth, where the supersti- 
tion of the dark ages sent forth armies 1 

While urging my message, the image of the 
primitive ancestors of those for whom I plead, 
the converts of apostles and the founders of 
Christianity, comes up before me. I imagine 
their sainted spirits, with parental anxiety for 
their offspring increased by the knowledge and 
the holiness of heaven, to be hovering over this 
assembly. They say to you : Brethren, once 
like you we gave our children precept upon pre- 
cept, our daily prayers ascended to heaven for 
them, and we left with them that precious 
legacy, the word of God, anxiously hoping that 
their children's children to the end of time would 
follow us in unbroken succession to our mansions 
on high. Hereafter, upon the fair face of your 
beloved America, as now upon that glory of all 
lands which was once our country, a night of 
apostacy may settle down, and hordes of yet 
unnamed barbarian invaders fasten deep the 
blight of some new Mohammedanism. Would 
you then, yourselves, stoop from your abode in 



229 

heaven to smile upon an assembly in some dis- 
tant part, met to restore to your benighted and 
oppressed descendants, the lamp of eternal life ? 
Hear, now, we pray you, the plea in behalf of 
ours. Restore to them the light so long since 
gone out among them, and receive the blessing 
of the whole assembly of prophets, apostles, and 
martyrs. 



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